


Of the Sea

by LaPetiteReveuse



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: AU, Alex is a trawler, F/F, Fishing town, She's a little lost, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-09-18 20:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 37,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9401225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaPetiteReveuse/pseuds/LaPetiteReveuse
Summary: After Alex and Kara's father passed away leaving no one to his boat and home, Alex gives up everything to move back to the small town she grew up in. Trawling doesn't lead to fantastically exciting anecdotes to share until she ventures into a storm and brings up something more than fish in her net.





	1. Stagnate (Verb) - to stay the same without growing or developing

**Author's Note:**

> So it's loosely based upon the movie Ondine of which i love :) I hope you enjoy it

For you, I leave my light on  
To do its best against the storm.  
And you came in like the tide and  
I knew that we could keep each other warm.

-Braille, Lisa Hannigan

* * *

 

The waves cut into one another viciously creating the crashing sound in which Alex Danvers found her father. She heard as he spoke to her on his boat. It was the reason she came back once he had died. To find him again after too long. She’d been born in this small town on the coast, her and her sister had. And in turn, they had both moved away as well. After Jeremiah died Alex returned to the small house, far past safety to keep the place alive. Alex sailed the boat each day surviving on a day to day wage from selling what little fish she could catch. It wasn’t ideal, but she enjoyed it.

She stood, drenched in the salt water that she assumed by now was in her bloodstream and pulled up her last net for the day. The catch was shameful. There was barely enough, but she’d survive. Recently her catches had been more to do with luck of the day. Consistency was a foreign concept and she was painfully reminded each day at how fragile the whole set up was. Too long will poor results and she’d be begging for a job in town.

She waited patiently as Mr J’onzz weighed her catch and as they handed her the cash with a solemn expression.

Mr J’onzz was one working people in town, and the oldest person Alex could stand at all. He worked in the only fishery in town and had been doing so since Alex could remember back to when she was a little girl. Mr J’onzz had been good friends with her father, and so she had practically been raised by him as well as her own parents. She still saw him as a father figure, and she was certain he knew it. She also knew he wasted his potential here in town. Having originally settled here to be with his wife and raise his daughters, now had been left alone in a town that reminded him every day of what he had lost. Alex felt sorry for him, as it was unlikely he’d leave now. She felt hypocritical thinking of his story as a sad one when she too was in a similar position.

“Oh, I saw your sister’s car in town,” J’onzz said brightly. “How long is she staying?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Alex states taking her earnings, “I’ll tell her to stop by and say hey though?” Alex offered. J’onzz smiles warmly like her father used to do and nodded.  

By the time Alex had pulled into the peer outside the house and tied it up, Kara was already sat inside with a cup of coffee and the fire going. Kara, as honest as she was, was still overly nosey and so when Alex looked through the window she saw as Kara was looking through the cupboards and sighing. When Alex walked in, Kara quickly slammed the cupboard door shut and spun found innocently smiling to Alex.

Alex raised an eyebrow.

“You look terrible.” Kara laughs nodding at Alex’s fishing attire. With her waterproof bib and brace trousers, thick boots, and her woolly hat that had been knitted for her by Kara herself and had become scraggly from repetitive wear. 

“It’s lovely to see you too.” Alex smiles, “I’ve told you before that you don’t need to keep checking up on me.”

“Actually, I’m just stopping by,” Kara says proudly, but before Alex can refuse this or argue Kara shoos her away. “You go get showered and I’ll cook.”

“You’ll cook?” Alex raises her eyebrows knowing full well that the last time Kara cooked was in home ec class in high school, and even that was a tragedy for everyone involved.

“Okay. I’ll get the takeout I bought ready. It’s from that little place off Caile Street.” Kara says casually awaiting Alex’s excitement. Instead, Alex has already run off to her room to get her change of clothes.

“I love you,” Alex shouts from her room.

Kara should have been used to the way the house felt by now, and yet each time she stepped inside it still had a foreign eeriness to it that she couldn’t shake. She didn’t know how Alex survived here. Well, she did. On determination alone. And determination didn’t heat the small house very well.

By the time Alex comes back, she’s wearing a thick sweater, and her hair is drying from a shower. She sees the food on the table and quickly jumps over, taking a plate and sitting down. Kara’s set the table, which the cutlery will inevitably be the wrong way round for her. Alex misses this routine and when Kara sits down in what was her childhood place around the table she feels comfortable.

“How was today?” Kara shoving what was already her their potsticker in her mouth.

“Shit,” Alex says without even thinking about it. She begins to pile her plate, knowing from experience that if she doesn’t reserve food now then Kara will eat it all before Alex has finished her first mouthful.

“All this and you don’t earn a lot,” Kara mutters to herself so that Alex can hear.

“I earn enough,” Alex says

“Alex, I was raised on the wage you're earning. I know it’s not.” Kara looks at Alex with pitiful eyes, which Alex has grown used to ignoring.

Instead, Alex moves the conversation on and to Kara, “so where are you going then that you’re just stopping by?”  

“I’m going South to Metropolis for a few days.”

“To see Clark?”

“I’ll stop by his to see him, but nope. I’m on a business trip.” Kara sits back in her chair beaming with joy.

“You’re an elementary school teacher.” Alex deadpans.

Kara scoffs, “I know. Principal Grant sent me on a trip to other state schools to see about their food programs.”

“Seems appropriate,” Alex says smugly watching as Kara inhales her food. “How is Ms Grant?”

“She’s fine,” Kara says slowly.

“She still treat you poorly?” Alex asks.

“She doesn’t treat me poorly. She just has her own way of showing appreciation.”

“Is that way by _not_ showing appreciation.” Alex quips, quite proud of herself for that one. Kara seems less impressed however. “Let’s face it, that place would crumble without you.”

Kara smiles, “probably. How’s Max?”

Alex groans, “That man is a pig.”

“That man _is_ a pig. I’m glad you finally agree with me on that one. Why were you with him again?”

“He promised me financial security.” Alex states.

“And they say romance is dead.” Kara smiles to Alex who’s looking down at her food refusing to look at Kara who is enjoying this too much. “You know where else offers financial security?”

“I’m not moving to National City, Kara.”

“Why not?” Kara wines.

“You know why.”

Kara reaches across the table to take Alex’s hand in her own. “Dad’s gone.”

“He’s still with me on that boat. I can still hear him.”

Kara nods. She knows this is true, she just doesn’t know how to tell her that is isn’t the sea that allows her to hear their father, it’s his memory. And it follows Kara to National City too.

* * *

 

Kara sets off that night in order to get to her hotel before Midnight; _she paid for the room for five nights so she was gonna use it._

Once she’s gone the house hums with emptiness again and as Alex takes herself off to bed she’s whisked off to sleep by the house of the sea building into a storm.


	2. Permutation (Noun) - the act of permuting; alteration; transformation

Alex can tell before she’s even fully awake that the storm wasn’t safe enough to go out on the sea. She hurled herself out of bed and glanced out of the window to confirm that there was no way anyone should venture into that. She took her truck to town instead, in order to pick up some supplies for dinner.

The local store, and one of the only ones Alex shops at is a small corner shop on the sea front originally belonging to Mr Winslow Schott, now belonging to his wife and two sons after he went to prison. Winn, his son eldest had been in the same year as Kara all the way through school, and so Alex had grown up always enough years ahead of Winn to be able to remember and embarrass him will all the stories on his youth.

He currently part-owned the store, but to those who didn’t know the family you would constantly assume he was just a shop boy paid minimum wage to stack shelves. When Alex walked in she spotted him in the back of the store and held her hand up in the air holding her pinky out so he would know it was her. She saw his hand do the same as she walked in the opposite end of the store to check the reduced section.

Alex made her shop brief in order to get back to her home and away from the storm as soon as she should. She placed her basket on the till and waited for Winn to stop her to run them through.

Maxwell Lord, the town’s millionaire after inheriting his father’s business seemed to linger in this store the way cigarette smoke does. He along with the rest of the buffoons who idealised that a more expensive boat equalled better fish. Currently with him was Simon Tycho, a local businessman slash manipulator who owned more land than he knew what to do with, and Anton Schott, Winn’s younger brother who was more dissimilar that could have been imagined.

“Danvers,” Maxwell acknowledged, though she really wished he hadn’t.

She turned, not even giving away the impression she was pleased to see him. “Lord.” She returned.

“Not out on your boat today?”

“Have you looked outside? No one is out today.” She says gesturing to the sky which is currently throwing it down so hard that the sea couldn’t even be seen clearly.

“Yeah. Especially wouldn’t want a delicate woman like yourself out in that.” Tycho states looking out at the sea. Tycho had always rubbed Alex up the wrong way, she wasn’t sure if it was his smile, the way he always seemed a little too muscly or the fact he felt entitled to whatever he saw, but Alex tried to steer clear of him at all costs. He didn’t make it easy however. Alex turned on his quickly

“What did you call me?” Alex spat back at him.

“Here we go,” He rolls his eyes and stands over her, “You offended because I called you a woman? Is that not the ‘correct’ term?” He mocks.

“You called me delicate. Do I _look_ delicate to you?”

He takes a step back and eyes her up. She immediately regrets the invitation for him to look at her, she feels violated as soon as his eyes move. He smirks.

“I’m just saying if _we_ won’t go out, then a little thing like you don’t stand a chance.” He offers.

Alex grabs stares as him for a while and shouts to Winn without even breaking eye contact. “Leave this, I’ll pick it up later when I return with my catch.” She then turns and makes for the door. Pulling her hood up with a little too much force she steps out into the storm.

She’s quickly stopped by Winn’s hand pulling her back. “What the hell?!” He shouts at her. “You’re not seriously going to risk your life to prove a point?”

“Yeah?” Alex states as though it’s a given fact, which in a way it is.

“Please just think sensibly for a second.” Winn begs, now drenched himself.

“When have I ever thought sensibly if principles are on the table?” She says back.

Winn sighs, “That’s not a good a good thing.” He says, and then after a moment longer of getting rained upon, “Come back safe.”

It was the thought of those pigs faces that fuelled Alex on. Without that she would have admitted defeat hours ago, and have gone home. She trudged on though, blind from the rain as the cold wind whipped her face painfully. Her hands numb to the pain as she pulled nets up. The catch was poorer than usual, but this was to expected in a storm when the fish swam deeper.

Alex struggled to see anything more than few meters in front of her, and eventually from fear of the storm getting the better of her boat, Alex decides that this will be the last net she throws in.

Except when she pulls it up, it’s heavy. She doesn’t let her hope get too high as it’s always a possibility she’s pulled up floating crap. And when she eventually pulled it out of the water she squints to see fish and… a body.

She’s less than doubtful that the person in the net is alive, no one would be able to survive in this. But she pulls it in with the same urgency as though she were certain they were alive. She takes no care with the net and takes her knife out to cut the person out. Except, contrary to Alex’s belief as the person is free from the rope they move; choking.

Alex quickly sets into actions pulling the person into her lap and performing the Heimlich manoeuvre until what seems like half the sea come from the woman’s mouth. Coughing, the woman panics and begins to flail at Alex who shuffles backwards out of the way. The woman shifts in order to cough up more of what was in her lungs before taking her first real deep breath. Alex does at the same time, assured that she’s okay.

“What are you doing out in a storm!?” Alex shouts to the woman.

“You are too.” The woman says quieter and only just audible.

“Not in the water!” Alex says pointing. “Come on, I’ll take you to the hospital,” Alex says standing on unsteady feet.

The woman panics once Alex suggests this and holds her hand out to stop her. “No! No hospital!”

“No hospital? I just pulled you from the sea!” Alex shouts.

“I don’t want to see _anyone_.” The woman pushes herself up against the side of the boat and pulls her knees to her chest. Alex feels the cold water through layers and layers of thick clothing, she can’t imagine that the woman is safe in the single shirt she is wearing.

“I suppose I’ll just leave then, shall I?” Alex jokes trying to decide whether to take the woman to the hospital anyway, kicking and screaming.

“I don’t mind seeing you.” The woman mutters.

“You don’t want to see anyone, but you don’t mind seeing me?”

“No.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you pulled me from the water.” The woman states and Alex decides the woman isn’t so badly injured.

“Well, I have to go to shore to sell my fish. You gonna sit on my boat?” Alex tells her. The woman nods as Alex then goes to steer the boat back to shore. The woman stays curled up by the side in the rain.

By the time they have reached the shore, the woman had moved into the steering cabin and has instead curled up in the corner out of sight. She’s silently shaking so Alex offers her her coat even though it’s sodden from rain. There’s hardly anything dry on the boat any longer, but the woman seems more than appreciative anyway.

J’onn is less than happy by Alex’s choice to have ventured out on the sea, as he weighs the fish with a raised eyebrow and tutting. Alex is feeling his icy stare far worse than she felt the icy sea. As he gives her the cash for her fish he shakes his head. They don’t exchange many words, but the message he’s communicating is all but too apparent.

“Thanks, J’onn.” She called with a smile as he hums his response.

When Alex makes it back to Schott’s store the three men are still waiting about, you’d have thought they’d have something better to do then spend their days standing in corners of stores bothering customers, but knowing the town Alex realises this is probably quite exciting for them. “Danvers. Back already?” Anton taunts.

“Back with my earnings for the day, absolutely.” She smiles smugly.

“Can’t imagine you got a lot from that little boat.” Maxwell mocks nodding towards her father’s boat bobbing on the sea.

“More than you got today.” Alex smiles and then walks to the counter where Winn is trying, and failing to hide a smile. He puts Alex’s basket of groceries from earlier back on the counter and begins to put them through the till.

“Not that I condone your foolish actions but well done,” Winn tells her.

“Thanks.” She smiles back. “And a bottle of bourbon, please,” Alex adds looking up at the shelves behind Winn’s head. He pulls down a bottle and runs that through as well.

Alex pays with that day's earning happily and when she takes her groceries Winn speaks again.

“Oh, and…” he takes out a lot of dollar bills and offers them to Alex. He hushes his voice as he tells the explanation, “ _They_ made bets on how long you’d be out there before you gave up. _I_ bet that you’d come back successful. And they’re _really_ bad with money.”

Alex counts the bills she’s been given with eye wide, “There’s a hundred and fifty dollars here!” She explains handing it back.

Winn waves his hands as if to refuse it, “You earnt it.” She smiles.

“Yeah, but _you_ made the bet.” She states as they settle on splitting it.

Alex almost forgets momentarily about the woman who is curled up in the corner of her boat until she’s stood back on it and glances at her. The water has calmed down enough to allow Alex a smooth ride back to her house. When she does she climbs of automatically tying it up as the woman emerges from the cabin but stays on the boat.

“You gonna stay there all night?” Alex asks as the woman looks to Alex’s house doubtfully. “No one’s gonna see you inside the house. And you’ll catch your death on that boat overnight.”

The woman, with aid from Alex, climbs from the house and walks up to the house wide-eyed and still shivering. Inside Alex dumps the groceries on the table before walking to her room leaving the woman alone in the main room. She looks around taking it all in. There are pictures on the wall of Alex’s family including a child’s drawing of the family. All the furniture is old and worn, and it’s small, but it’s…

“Homely.” The woman says as Alex steps back into the wall finding the woman still stood where Alex left her wearing the wet shirt and Alex’s jacket.

Alex looks around as though she expects to see something new but of course it’s just the same old place she’s lived in for years.

She holds out her arms holding a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. “The bathroom is the door at the end, they might be… a little long but you can just roll up the ends.” Alex states noting the woman’s height.

The woman takes the clothes, still holding the coat around her and nods.

“Do you have a name?” Alex then asks watching as the woman looks out the window.

“Sawyer.” The woman answers. Alex chuckles to herself.

“Like the name on my dad’s boat?”

The woman, self-titled ‘Sawyer’ nods.

“Is that your real name?” Alex asks doubtful she’ll believe the women is she says it is.

But she doesn’t, she shakes her head. Alex nods impressed by the woman’s honesty considering the situation and the risk of it. She could have lied and made up a name. Alex is all too aware of the danger of the situation of letting someone who seems shrouded in mystery to stay with her, but she can’t just leave her by the side of the road.

“You can sleep in the room on the left,” Alex tells her with a shaky voice. “The window sometimes rattles, if it does just push it shut and pull on the latch,” Alex tells her. The women looks down the hallway and nods before walking off to get changed.

As Alex stands making dinner later for two she turns to look at the woman who is now sat on her couch facing the fire in silence. She knows she’s making a mistake. She could be killed in her sleep for all she knows, yet she cooks the woman dinner anyway and allows the mistake to play out, curious to see it’s end.


	3. Addled (Verb) - to cause (someone) to think unclearly; confuse

When Alex woke in the morning she was relieved. When she checked the room opposite hers she was concerned. And when she walked into the lounge to find Sawyer sat in front of a recently made fire she was just confused. She’d half expected Sawyer to have taken the TV and run out in the middle of the night, but obviously, she’d decided against it.

“Do you want taking anywhere?” Alex asks moving to the kitchen to turn on the kettle on.

“No,” Sawyer answers without moving.

“Well I have to go out trawling, so I left some clothes on the bed and you can...” Alex pauses not really sure how to entertain, “read a book or watch TV or… whatever.”

Sawyer looks to the bookshelf that’s overflowing and nods.

Alex doesn’t stick around much longer than breakfast before she’s setting off on her boat watching as Sawyer stands on the edge of the pier waving her off. Alex isn’t sure how to respond to this, she usually leaves an empty house that offers no goodbye other then turned off lights. She smiles as she waves back and figures for this feeling alone, she wouldn’t mind Sawyer staying.

* * *

 

“Something has you in a good mood. And it’s not your catch because it’s shit.” J’onn says weighing up the fish.

“Nothing wrong with being happy,” Alex says back.

“No. But you haven’t stopped smiling since you came in. It’s…” J’onn trails off trying to find the right word. “…strange.”

Alex’s expression drops slightly.

“What recent developments are to be held responsible?” J’onn asks refusing to give Alex her money until she confesses.

“I met someone,” Alex states briefly _knowing_ it won’t be enough to satisfy him.

“Where?”

“In my net,” Alex tells him. J’onn narrows his eyes trying to work out whether this is code for something more.

“You’re joking, surely?” J’onn asks.

“No. I’m not.” Alex laughs realising how ludicrous the whole thing must sound. “Dreaming maybe, but sure enough she was there this morning.”

“Interesting.” J’onn hums.

“But you can’t tell anyone,” Alex adds knowing if the information gets out it won’t end well.

J’onn nods, “No, my lips are sealed. But you’ll keep me informed of developments, Alexandra?”

“Of course.” J’onn eventually hands her the cash which she takes with a smile.

She spends part of her earnings on underwear for Sawyer. A woman who washes up in a net and refuses to see anyone is surely in need of it.

When she gets back she nearly hit Sawyer with her boat. Floating on the surface of the water wearing only a large shirt is Sawyer peacefully. Alex chuckles to herself looking down over the side of her boat.

“Having fun?” Alex calls down as Sawyer opens her eyes and smiles up to Alex.

“Better now you’re here,” Sawyer shouts. Alex stands up straight again out of sight so Sawyer can’t see the blush that comes to her cheek. She pulls into her pier climbing off and bringing the new underwear with her.

“I have something for you,” Alex shouts to the water. Sawyer stands up in the water and Alex notices for a second how the shirt clings to her body not leaving a lot to the imagination.

“Oh yes?” Sawyer adds wading her way to the shore.

“Underwear for you. I guessed your size.” Alex states walking into the house as Sawyer follows.

Once Alex steps foot inside she senses something is different. It feels warmer and cosier. The fire is going and there is a smell of something delicious filling Alex’s nostrils. Sawyer walks in behind Alex and smiles.

“I fixed the windows,” Sawyer tells her which explains the temperature. “The screws were loose in a few and some had gaps in the frames which I filled with a paste I made from the weeds outside.”

Alex is impressed and slightly dubious, which must show in her expression because Sawyer goes on, “I wanted to thank you for letting me stay.”

“You’re welcome,” Alex says passing Sawyer the underwear, which Sawyer takes smiling from the side of her mouth and wandering off to the room she had slept in.

Alex takes her bourbon from the day before and pours herself a glass enjoying the sting as it goes down. For the first time since her father died she unsure. She’s unsure what to do with herself, where to be. She usually exists on her own, off her own rules. But now there’s a dinner being cooked by a stranger, and said stranger in the room where her parents had slept, there are no holes in the windows and Alex just sits to the table waiting for what’s next.

What’s next is Sawyer serves dinner and she and Alex sit opposite one another in silence as they eat. Alex takes her meal with another glass of bourbon, while Sawyer just drinks water.

“This is delicious.” Alex breaks the silence which Sawyer seems all too grateful for. “Where did you get the ingredients?”

“In your cupboards. I hope you don’t mind?” She already seems apologetic which Alex shakes her head at.

“Not one bit, especially not when you use them to make food like this.” Alex hums as she eats another mouthful, savouring the taste. Sawyer smiles to herself. “What were you doing in the water?” Alex then asks seriously.

Sawyer pauses, looking down. “I was swimming.”

“And then?” Alex presses.

“And then I gave up swimming.”

“And then?”

“And then I drowned,” Sawyer states simply continuing eating her food.

“You drowned?”

Sawyer nods.

“And then what?”

“And then I died.”

“And so, this is your second life?”

“Yes.”

They eat the rest of their respected meals in silence. Ales offers to wash the pots, though she almost falls over herself from the bourbon and so Sawyer takes the sponge out of her hand and takes over. Alex slumps onto the couch and flicks on the TV unable to pay much attention to it. The pictures flash in front of her eyes in a blur until eventually she’s conscious of her eyes being completely closed. When she opens then it’s pitch black outside, yet the usual late evening chill is absent. The fire has burnt to its last embers and the TV has been flicked off. Atop Alex is placed a woollen blanket that Alex knows is from the cupboard in the room where she sleeps. It’s tucked around her and Alex settles into it for a while as it feels almost like a hug. It’s an indirect hug from Sawyer herself who is now absent. Alex supposes she’s already gone to bed herself, which she goes to check, just to make sure. She’s not sober enough to do this quietly. But also not sober enough to realise that Sawyer is woken by the noise. She stands in the doorway watching over Sawyer and slows her own breath to listen to Sawyers’. It’s peaceful, like the sound of the waves of the sea. The sounds that Alex spends days with and can become enveloped in.

Alex stands there perhaps a little too long before she finds that she’s too tired to stand any longer. She becomes suddenly aware that Sawyer is sleeping in her parents’ bed. The bed where Kara sleeps when she comes over. The bed where everyone seems to be fine in, except Alex. It’s a bed that hold too many memories for her. Of stormy nights and climbing into bed with her parents where they would inevitably hold Alex until she stopped shaking. Of nightmares quickly vanquished from a hug. Of late nights watching films and reading bedtime stories. The feeling of nostalgia washes over Alex as does the grief of the lost memories. They’re mixed in with images of her father lying day after day when her mother died from inability to move on. They’re mixed in with images of emptiness straight after her father had died himself knowing the emptiness she saw could never equate to the emptiness she now felt in her life.

And now Sawyer lies there. A girl she fished from the same sea her father sailed every day for years. And Alex knows it doesn’t mean anything. But it does to her. She just isn’t sure what.


	4. Forever (Noun) - a promise made but rarely kept

With the fixed windows and Alex’s hangover, the house remained quiet for the morning. Alex decided with Winn’s winnings from his bet, and Alex’s unexpected earnings from the stormy day that she could take the day off. She lay in bed watching the clock and feeling simultaneously pleased and guilty at the time she was wasting lying there doing nothing. She heard Sawyer moving around in the living room, occasionally moving to the bathroom and back again. She figured, even if to stop Sawyer from fixing and cleaning the entire house, she should get up and entertain.

She regretted the decision immediately as her head span as soon as her feet hit the floor. She wrapped a dressing gown around herself and shuffled to the living area effortfully to slump onto the couch. She felt Sawyer’s eyes on her the entire trip but her head hurt too much to care. She assumes Sawyer stood there judging her when it went silent until over her shoulder Sawyer offered her a paracetamol and a cup of tea. Alex looks up at her with a warm smile and accepted them both. Sawyer sat down next to Alex with a cup of her own as the fire burned and they both sat in silence.

Alex heard nothing but the crack of the fire and it lulled her into a doze. She felt as Sawyer took her tea placing it down and then as Sawyer moved back, a little closer this time to Alex and sat breathing in sync to Alex’s breaths.

Though she wasn’t one for spending time comfortably in anyone’s company other than Kara’s Alex couldn’t help the feeling of ease develop. She wasn’t sure if it was the hangover or perhaps the fact she was too tired to care but sitting with Sawyer on that couch, Alex felt like she could exist in that moment until the day she died.

When her legs went numb, and she was dangerously close to falling back to sleep, she stood and stretched. Her hangover still there, but dulling in the back of her head.

“I’m going for a walk,” Alex announces as Sawyer nods looking around.

“Where are you walking to?” Alex knows Sawyer is expecting the walk to involve the town. She knows that the idea of this frightens Sawyer too much to join her and she wonders again whether to trust someone so afraid of the public eye.

“Nowhere. I’m walking the hills. There are no people up there but it looks pretty.” Alex tells Sawyer who immediately lights up. “Do you want to come?”

Sawyer nods.

“Well, we both need to get dressed. Warmly. I will lend you some clothes.” Alex tells her before walking off down the hall.

She takes some clothes she thinks will fit Sawyer from her wardrobe piling them in order so Sawyer has a choice. Though when she walks into the other room Sawyer is stood in nothing but her underwear. Alex freezes in the doorway momentarily trying to think too long about what she should do. Sawyer turns and takes the clothes from Alex without acknowledging the situation.

Living in a coastal town where the average temperature settles at freezing, there aren’t a great deal of opportunities to become accustomed to the sight of the bare human body. Other than her family and a few boys from college that were mistakes, the only person she’d ever seen wearing only their underwear was Maxwell; an image Alex tried at great length to erase from her mind. Nothing quite like the sight that was before her now. Sawyer’s bare skin holding the scars of her past stretching across her limbs and back. It’s all foreign to Alex as she tries to reason with herself that there is nothing about Sawyer anatomically that Alex hasn’t seen before on herself. Yet, she can’t work out why but Sawyer’s body looks like a new land bearing no similarity to Alex’s.

“You okay, Danvers?” Sawyer asks catching Alex’s eye curiously.

“Yes,” Alex answers snapping back into reasonable conscious thought. “There’s some choice there.”

Alex steps out and closes the door behind her. She gets changed quickly and waits in the living room wearing so many layers that stood inside she is sweltering yet she knows the second she steps outside she’ll appreciate the layers. When Sawyer walks out Alex is hit once again with that feeling of the two parts of her life; the before and the after, coming too close. Wrapped up warm is Sawyer, in Jeremiah’s thick coat.

“That’s my dad’s coat,” Alex states feeling a tear come to her eye. “Where did you get it from?”

“It was hanging on the back of the door,” Sawyer states noting Alex’s sombre expression. “Do you want me to take it off?” And already the coat is being slipped off her shoulders.

“No,” Alex answers surprising herself as well as Sawyer who stands paused with it halfway off her back waiting for something more. Alex walks over to her and pulls the coat back on for her. “It’s fine. I just haven’t seen it in a while.” Sawyer nods as Alex now does up the coat for her. They both stand a minute as Alex gathers herself and Sawyer waits.

They walk along the hills of which the official name was unknown, the locals knew as ‘Weekend Trip Hills’ given how long it took to walk the entirety and was known to people of Alex’s generation as ‘Halfway Point’. When asked about the name it was a trade secret that the name had come from the story of multiple teenagers having, at different times venture to the hills to lose their virginity in the wilderness but only manage to get halfway before admitting the cold got the best of them and would come back down. They told the older generations and younger that the name came from another source though the reasoning varied from person to person. Alex knew of the name, she knew of the reasoning too, but to her, the hills had been only used as a solace from the times of feeling inadequate against her sister.

Sawyer kept mostly quiet as they climbed, both using what breath they had at climbing the hills’ almost ninety-degree slope.

Once at the top, they took in another deep breath and both filled their lungs with the cutting air. From the peak, they could view the entire town down below them and further out into the sea than Alex had ever ventured. It became painfully obvious how small the town was from that point, how it could all be contained within a few square miles at the foot of a few hills. On the far left, Alex’s house sitting tiny and alone next to the image from a postcard. Alex recalled moments from her childhood of coming to sit up in the hills for days wishing to be anywhere else. Desperately counting down the days till she left. And yet, here she stood again. Years later having left and come back finding herself in the exact same position as then except with fewer choices and her dad to go home to for comfort.

Her face was too numb to notice the tears fall down her cheeks. Sawyer noticed though, and used a finger to wipe away the sadness afraid it would freeze there causing more pain than it needed to. When she removed her hand she then took Alex’s with it, gripping tightly to reassure. Alex suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable on that hill. When she had been alone she could feel it all without any eyes upon her. Here with Sawyer she felt the concerned glances and felt bare in front of her. Yet less alone.

Kara would have taken Alex’s hand. She would have probably held Alex in her arms and suggested they walk back home away from the sight that caused so much grief. Sawyer was different. She understood more. She took Alex’s hand to let her know she was there, but she allowed Alex to stand if she needed. Kara meant well. She meant better than Alex had known anyone could. But sometimes she didn’t understand. It wasn’t her fault, it was just different for her.

Alex shook it all from her mind for a while as she began to walk the hillside with Sawyer.

“Can I know your name yet?” Alex asks looking at Sawyer who contemplates it.

“Maggie.” She answers which takes Alex by surprise.

“Maggie.” She repeats letting it fall off her tongue. “Maggie Sawyer.” Alex strings together bringing a smile to Maggie’s face. It feels odd to her for Sawyer now to bare a first name also, but it also seems to fit. As much as the name of her father’s boat had. Alex doesn’t know if this is Sawyer’s real name, but she _knows_ it isn’t her real second name and doesn’t care. It’s as real as any name.

“Do you have any family, Maggie?” Alex then asks. She doesn’t watch Maggie’s expression, but she feels the shift in the air somehow. She knows she asked a dangerous question.

“Not really.” Maggie states looking out, “Do you?”

“I have Kara. She’s my sister.” Alex says, “She’s… the good one.”

Maggie raises an eyebrow and tilts her head curiously. “Good one?”

“Yeah. She’s kinder, stronger, a better person.” Alex feels a weight press on her momentarily before it is lifted again, leaving her lighter than before. She’s never said this about Kara, but she knows everyone thinks it. Kara was the one who came back as soon as the call about their father’s illness was made. She was the one who nursed him in his dying hours. Their mother too she came back for. The people Alex knew she knew through Kara, there was no one of her own. “She teaches is an elementary school for disabled kids.” Alex chuckles because to her, this is the true indicator of persona.

“And you work on your father’s boat.”

“And I work on my father’s boat,” Alex repeats solemnly.  

“You stayed.” Maggie then tells Alex and the words bounce off her. She may have stayed now, but she hadn’t returned when it mattered most.

“How long are you staying?” Alex then asks trying to rid herself of her tears by changing the subject.

Maggie takes little time to think of her answer, “Depends, I guess.”

“On what?”

“On you.”

“On me?” Alex scoffs and looks to Maggie to see that she isn’t joking. “It depends on me, you can stay forever.” Alex jokes but Maggie stares at her with wide-eyed hopefulness.

“Forever?” She repeats and before Alex has truly thought through the weight of the promise she replies.

“Forever.”


	5. Surrender (Verb) - to let go of what you harbour

They sit on the hills of forever allowing them to feel it’s promise. Alex decides at some point after her promise that it is too much for her. The only person Alex would risk her life for is Kara, who rarely needs any intervening anyhow. Yet there’s a girl who Alex can happily promise forever to. And it feels strange to her, it feels foreign. She imagines this is that moment girls describe when they find their ‘best friend for life’, though she can’t help but note how different it feels from that. There’s more than a need to tell Sawyer everything, there’s a need to share it all with her. To share her experiences with Sawyer and take on Sawyer’s herself. She shifts herself from the thought and pulls herself back onto unsteady feet.

“It’s cold,” Alex states as though this should be news to the girl. Perhaps, Alex supposes what she feels is maternal care for Maggie of which she has been allowing to stay at her home and has been working for. Yet thinking of Maggie as family in any sense settles wrongly in her stomach.

“You can have the coat.” Maggie offers but Alex shakes her hands and takes a step away.

“No. You take it.” She says all too suddenly for Maggie to comprehend fully. “I’m going to cook tonight,” Alex announces. “I need to go to town to buy the things.”

Maggie looks down, “Can I… go back home?”

Alex doesn’t let it slip how Maggie calls it home. How she feels at peace there, with Alex. But she also doesn’t let it show, she hides the joy that the word brings her. And all that it suggests. “Yes. You know the way back?”

Maggie looks down, straight at the house and nods.

Alex doesn’t know how to cook many meals. She wasn’t really taught, how to cook anything other than fish, and after over twenty years of her family eating just that, she grew tired of the taste. She walked up and down the aisles of the store many times trying to weigh up her options. Winn stands at the counter answering the questions she shouts out the best that he can. Of course, this too isn’t a great source of information when it comes to cooking.

Eventually, she decides on an easy pasta dish, as she’s never heard horror stories relating to the taste of simple pasta dishes. She buys other bits and bobs to make a cheese sauce and add bacon to it. She buys a bottle of red wine as well to accompany the meal.

“Got a fancy date?” Winn asks scanning through the items with a watchful eye.

Alex hopes he’s only looking at the groceries when she feels the blush form on her cheeks. “I have a friend staying over,” Alex tells him honestly; other details don’t need to be divulged. Though Winn means well, Alex has no doubt that once the story is told to Winn it will effectively be told to the entire town.

He squints, “A friend?”

“From med school.” Alex lies figuring this will stop the questions. It’s a known fact that Alex dropped out of med school in order to come back to the town to take care of Jeremiah’s boat. It’s unknown quite what she left behind though. Alex doesn’t talk about it with anyone, not even Kara anymore.

“Oh.” Winn says as he scans the last ones through, “You had friends?” He jokes trying to break the tension of what he doesn’t know.

Alex smiles at him, “Surprisingly yes. I was quite the social butterfly.”

Alex remembers the days at med school as she walks home. She feels the pang in her chest at everything that she gave up to come back here, and she wonderers if it will ever ease. Much like the grief of her father’s death she expects it’ll just take its home within her and remain there hurting less as the days go on, but still present. She wonders if her father had never died how things would have differed. She wonders if she’d have ever returned to the town she’d grown in. Whether she’d have become the doctor she was training so hard to become. Or would she have eventually ended up in this same place? Perhaps this was the shortcut to the inevitable end result. Only her father would have been stood on the porch to the small house with wide arms to hold her when she fell. Instead, there was Kara who drove down too often than was necessary to check on her, and there was J’onn who listened and made sure she was never in harm, there was Winn who provided the friendship Alex thought she’d left behind at school. And then there was Maggie, someone new to her who Alex felt more safe with than she’d felt in a while.

When Alex neared the house, she saw Maggie walk outside to greet her back home with a warm smile. Alex couldn’t help but smile back as she got closer. Maggie wrapped the shirt she was wearing tighter around herself to keep her from shivering. Alex quickened her pace to allow Maggie to get out of the cold as soon as possible, but she felt she could have stood at the edge of the path and watched forever as Maggie waited for her.

Sawyer sat watching at Alex cooked their dinner in a daze. She leans over the back of the sofa, unable to see the cooking process itself but only Alex.

“Have you made this before?” Maggie asks innocently as Alex stands with her hands on her hips wondering what to do next.

“Is it that obvious?” Alex returns looks at Sawyer and immediately regretting so as she becomes quickly distracted.

Sawyer hops up from where she’s sat and comes over to the counter to find piles of varying ingredients. She takes the pasta and snaps it into the pan. “You want to get this boiling as it will take the longest to cook.” She then takes another pan and begins adding ingredients before directing Alex on what to stir or add or fry. Alex watches the intense look in Sawyer’s eyes as she conducts the meal.

“Aren’t I meant to be making _you_ the meal?” Alex asks as Sawyer drains the pasta before putting it on two plates for them both.

Sawyer smiles to herself, “We’ll work on it.”

Alex grins widely, this idea of future attempts, at continued meals together.

They eat at opposite ends of the table both trying to eat the meal as cleanly as they can but making a mess anyway. Occasionally they both look up when the other isn’t looking and catch glimpses of pasta sauce being wiped away.

When they both finish, Alex collects the dishes and begins washing up as Maggie checks through the cupboards for something. She pulls out flour and then goes to the fridge.

“You _just_ ate,” Alex states wiping her hands dry.

“Dessert,” Sawyer says placing eggs and milk with the flour. “You okay with pancakes?”

Alex watches as Maggie makes a mess mixing the ingredients together, flour flying out of the bowl in clouds. Alex laughs as Maggie turns, flour across her cheeks. She takes some in her hands and flings it in Alex’s direction, it sticking to Alex’s forehead. He laughing ceases immediately as Maggie’s picks up.

The game begins as the two of them ignore the process of making pancakes and instead switch their task towards flinging egg, flour and pancake mix at one another until they're coated in the stuff and it’s beginning to set.

They both take a moment to look at their mess and then both burst into laughter. Alex’s stomach hurts from the amount of laughing, having gone so long without it. She can’t remember the last time she’d truly laughed this way till tears formed in her eyes and she felt unable to stop. Maggie too stands watching Alex clutching her stomach.

Suddenly a feeling washes over Alex as she stares at Maggie laughing and she isn’t sure if it’s the amount of wine she’s drunk or the way Maggie is laughing so beautifully, but she has the urge to reach out and wipe some of the egg from Maggie's cheek.

All laughing stops.

A serious atmosphere settles momentarily as Alex watches Maggie with such intensity and Maggie watches her back with curiosity. Time slows. Sound becomes non-existent except for the soft sounds of their breathing.

And into the silence, Maggie breathes out a single word, “Alex.”

The word grounds Alex as she takes her hand back and blinks away the feeling, “I’ll clean up.” She tells Maggie who suddenly looks disappointed.

Maggie tilts her head smiling at Alex, “You okay?”

Alex flusters as she begins to amuse herself with the cleaning. “Yes. Yes. I just… I need to clean… and you… go shower.”

Maggie nods, but Alex doesn’t see it before she shuffles off towards the bathroom.

They don’t speak for the rest of the day. Once Alex has finished cleaning the kitchen, Maggie is already in bed. Once Alex has finished showering and ridding herself from the mess, Maggie is asleep. Alex sits up that night, sitting on the edge of her bed, thinking. The same bed she’d sat as a kid and thought. Thought about why she’d never dated anyone, about why no boy seemed good enough for her, or she never seemed good enough for them. She remembers strategizing it all. Working out statistics and timeframes to ease her mind about it all. She wasn’t behind, she was just taking her time.

When she moved away there had been one night stands, and Alex realised that it just wasn’t something she was good at, she thought perhaps it was lack of practice but as she tried, again and again, none of it felt the way that she’d read about in the stories or the way the other girls described. She settled on it being one thing she failed at, and she kept it to herself. Even with Maxwell, she’d learn to fake it.

And now she sat, at the edge of her bed wondering why from the single glance at her friend Alex felt more alive in her chest. As though everything was suddenly sharper to her. It felt more than friendship for her.

In the early hours of the morning, as Alex has sat for hours on the bed and reached a level of exhaustion that one becomes delusional, she gets up and ventures to her parents’ old room where Maggie is lying alone in the bed. Alex has barely gone into this room since her parents’ deaths. Kara was the one to sort most of it out. She had been the one to clean and sort, and this was the room Kara slept in when she came to visit. To Alex, it was haunted. Except now, as Maggie lay there peacefully she stood and watched in her own peace.

Maggie stirred and shifted to face Alex. She wasn’t alarmed by waking to the image of a girl stood in the doorway, she invited her in.

“Are you okay?” Maggie asks, her eyes still trying to adjust fully.

Alex nods, “Can I come in?”

Maggie pats the bed by her side where Alex goes to sit stiffly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Alex lies, “Can I just stay here a bit?”

Maggie nods and curls up into herself again. There’s a mood shift from earlier in the evening. There’s a layer between the two of them now and Maggie can’t lay her finger on it but she wishes it would go away. “Do you want to talk about it?” Maggie asks.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Can you… just hold me?” Alex asks with shaky breath. She isn’t looking at Maggie, no light was needed to be able to tell this. Maggie sits up and as Alex had her back to her, Maggie hugs her from behind tightly. Alex does what she can to fight back the tears that the contact evokes.

At some point in your life, you’re likely to be held by someone who from the simple act of holding you will cause everything inside of you to unravel. Alex doesn’t believe in soulmates, she doesn’t believe that there is someone out there for everyone, but that feeling tells her that somehow the universe does put clues out there as to who we are meant to keep in our lives. People whose hearts touch ours through layers of skin and clothing. To Alex, Maggie was one of those people. She felt as though in that moment the only thing holding her together were Maggie arms clutching her tight. She lets tears fall from her eyes to her chin. From her chin onto Maggie’s arms and sobs silently. She isn’t sure what it is that really needs to be let go, she’s spent too long burying it that it has become foreign to even herself. But there’s something trapped beneath the surface and it weeps out of her in salty tears.

Once Alex becomes tired enough and Maggie becomes too tired to sit any longer they lay down. Maggie pulls the cover over herself and Alex and holds her from behind still, burying her head into Alex’s neck.

“This was my father’s room,” Alex mumbles in her dazed state. There’s pain laced into the words but it’s lost in her exhaustion.

Maggie doesn’t say anything in response. She knows if she does Alex might not go on, and it’s something she needs to do.

“I haven’t been able to sit on his bed since he…” Her words fail her but she’s out of tears. Instead, she just fades out at the end of the sentence. There’s a moment of silence as Alex turns to face Maggie. Maggie who is in a delirious state, but keeping conscious for Alex, because Alex needs her to be. She needs to say it. She needs to let go of whatever she has harboured. “I didn’t come back,” Alex whispers.

“Come back?”

“When he got sick. I didn’t believe he would actually die. I wanted to wait till my semester was over.” Alex pauses one more. She manages to find last tears within herself. Tears that had been trapped for years and pushed down, “He died before I got back. I wasn’t here.”

She doesn’t say any more. She can’t bring herself to.

Maggie holds her. Hugs her tighter “He forgives you, Alex.” She tells her. Alex shakes her head and tries to push back at Maggie who only holds her tighter. Eventually, Alex gives up trying to push away and instead clings into the shirt Maggie is wearing. She nestles into her chest and lets it go. Not completely, but the words have left her and so the harboured pain releases slightly too.

They both fall to sleep like that in Alex’s father’s bed.


	6. Fortuity (Noun) - a chance occurrence, especially a lucky one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not greatly proud of this chapter, so i apologise in advance. And i apologise it took a while. I have been beyond ill (like unable to move, snot pouring from nose ill. It's been beautiful)

They didn’t speak about it the next day but there was a different air between them. Neither could work out if it was more, or less comfortable, but it was different. Alex felt as though she had exposed far too much of herself, and Maggie left as though it was too dangerous for Alex to feel as close as she did. There was too much that Maggie had stored away in her own mind that Alex couldn’t venture into. It felt like lying somehow to hold someone as they tell you the darkness in their head while to lay not telling what puts her in danger. Maggie knows this should stop before it moves further before they both settle into a routine.

Maggie watches from the kitchen table as Alex fixes their morning coffee, no longer needing to ask how Maggie takes it and Maggie feels the moment of comfort and routine passed by the moment she had been brought up in Alex’s net. As she stares into her eyes across the table, clutching the coffee mug close to her face she knows she can’t give this up. She knows she should tell Alex about her past. Finally, and fully. Rather than snippets that she can see Alex try to piece together. And she’ll do it that night. After dinner when the day is drawing closed. Alex can make her decision to reject her then. For now, Maggie is able to share a glance over a table as though this is what they are able to do every day.

After coffee Alex goes off and pulls on her bib and brace trousers and her coat. Maggie watches her as she walks through the house curiously. Maggie holds out the knitted hat she knows Alex is looking for. “You’re going fishing?” Maggie asks as Alex takes the old hat and pulls it over her hair.

“Yes.” Maggie sits expectedly, and Alex feels there should be more to this parting. “Thought I might catch another.” Alex laughs.

“Another girl like me?” Maggie grins and god how Alex hopes she never stops doing that.

“Yes. Maybe the sea is full of them.” But she really doubts there is any more like Maggie in the water.

“Can I come with?”

 “I thought you didn’t want to be seen?”

“I can hide again.” Alex knows with Maggie on the boat she’ll be distracted, she also knows no one other than family has ever stepped foot on that boat since before she could remember.

“It’s bad luck,” Alex states walking outside where Maggie follows her.

“Someone else on the boat?”

Alex nods, climbing aboard the boat. Maggie stands on the dock. “For the fishing.”

“Have you been having any good luck lately?” Maggie raises her eyebrow knowingly. Alex bites her cheek in contemplation but once Maggie smiles she needs no more convincing.

“None. Get in.” She gestures and so Maggie jumps on board with gleeful expression.

Alex is barely able to focus on the fishing as Maggie prances up and down the deck like a small child on a school trip. She leans over the sides and reaches down into the freezing water. As the wind whips her hair against her face Alex figures it must hurt, but as she grins Alex supposes that she must have the skin of a whale.  Alex is wearing layer upon layer to keep warm, the water that’s seeping through still creating a challenge to maintain heat. Yet Maggie is stood wearing one layer which is flapping in the wind and perfectly content with herself.

She leans over the side of the boat once more and opens her mouth to sing loudly. “Sai che,” She begins and Alex can’t help but stare as she recognised that Maggie is singing in another language. “Sono tornado a rivedere,” She continues and Alex is spellbound. As the foreign words fall from her tongue Alex pauses to watch Maggie close her eyes and sing to the water. “Quel posto in cui andavamo insieme,” Alex can feel the boat rocking beneath her feet, she can feel the cold water against her skin but above it all, she feels something in the pit of her stomach that closely resembles that feeling before you’re about to jump a great height. She likes it, though, it satisfies her and terrifies her at the same time. “Dove pioveva col sole.” Maggie leans back again taking in a deep breath. She turns to catch Alex watching her.

“What was that?” Alex asks.

“Just a song,” Maggie replies.

“But you remembered it.”

“I must have.”

“It wasn’t in English,” Alex states curiously, trying to place it in her own mind.

“It that okay?”

“It’s amazing.”

They are both torn from the moment as a wave beats against the side of the boat knocking them both slightly. Once they regain their balance Alex takes charge and begins pulling up the cages. Her eyes betray her momentarily from shock as she finds the cages, usually so bare now filled with more than a days’ catch. “My God,” Alex calls out prompting Maggie to come over to look as well, of course, the sight bares no significance to her. She doesn’t know what a poor day nor a good day’s catch looks like.

“What?” She asks trying to recognise Alex’s expression as of joy or not.

“You’re playing games with me.” Alex laughs to herself, jumping giddily.

“No, I’m not.”

“What did you just do?”

“I… I sang?” Maggie stammers over her words.

“Yeah. I know. Come down here.” Alex gestures for Maggie to lean over the other side of the boat where another cage is below the water, “Sing again, would you?” And even if Alex wasn’t testing a theory she would have wished to hear Maggie sing again.

Maggie grins at Alex and finds her tune, “eravamo davvero felici con poco,” she pauses when Alex looks over the side of the boat and begins again when Alex looks at her, eyes gleaming with joy, “non aveva importanza né come né il luogo.” Alex takes Maggie hand in her own in excitement, and Maggie's voice is lost. Her mind is too preoccupied to find the words to a song she knows means tragedy. When she stops, Alex leans over the boat again and pulls up the cage to reveal one filled similarly to the previous one.

“Jesus. You bring me luck.” Alex laughs to herself.

“Luck?”

“Haven’t had much.”

“Everyone needs luck.”

“They do. Not everyone gets it.” Alex states, and she knows the harshness of the fact as much as anyone.

“Maybe it’s your turn,” Maggie suggests looking down at the lobster in the cage. Alex knows Maggie is talking about the trawling. She knows there nothing more to the statement but she feels it mean more to her. Already she feels like she’s had more luck than in years, and perhaps this is the universe finally paying her back for all that she’s had to put up with, but Alex doesn’t really believe in the universe making decisions for people. Maggie is more than Alex is worth, she feels it every time Maggie smiles at her or laughs. Nothing she ever did deserve this, but she’s thankful for it. Every second of it.

“Right, some over here.” Alex gestures sitting Maggie down on an old crate pushes up against the side. “Help me tie their claws.” Maggie’s expression turns to panic as Alex takes one of the lobster and walks towards her, “Right, put one in-between your legs so he doesn’t bite you.”

Maggie giggles as the lobster wriggles to be set free. Alex infected too by the contagious laughter adding difficulty to the task of typing up the claws. She does one successfully as Maggie watches.

“What do you do with them?” Maggie asks.

“What do you think?”

“Eat them,” Maggie states, staring at the sheer quantity of lobster that they have to prepare.

Alex laughs, “No. Sell them.”

“You always catch this much?”

“No. Almost never.” Alex lies. The answer is never.

They both wrestle for a while longer until they have tied up most of the lobster from the catch. “It wasn’t your song, you know,” Alex states watching Maggie finish tying the claws of the last lobster in her lap. “Couldn’t have been.” She adds more to herself. She wouldn’t be surprised that Maggie’s charm would cross species, but the idea of a song having lured crustaceans into cages was simply ludicrous.

“No.” Maggie agrees, passing Alex the last lobster. She has a playful smile on her lips.

“They were already in the pots,” Alex replies before grabbing the cages, still filled with more unprepared lobster and throwing it over the side of the boat.

“Why’s you put them back?” Maggie asks leaning over to watch the cages sink out of sight.

“Save them for a rainy day. We’ll sell the rest.”

“We?”

“You did sing. You should get a share of the catch.”

“I don’t want to meet anyone.”

Alex takes a breath and grits her teeth. There’s so much within the fear of not wanting to be seen or see anyone else, Alex just can’t wrap her head around how precautious she should be. Her mother would have told her to abandon the girl; someone with so much fear over people is surely hiding something dangerous. Her father, on the other hand, would have encouraged the mystery. On this matter, amongst many other Alex chose to follow her father’s words for wisdom. “Okay.” She states before driving them back to the small house.

“You stay here and I’ll go sell these?”

Maggie grins, hugging Alex from behind as she stands at the steering wheel. Maggie then presses a light kiss against her ear before then jumping from the boat to wave from the shore. Alex smiles widely savouring the ghost feeling of the kiss on her ear and the sight of the gleeful girl waving enthusiastically for her.

Alex lets the smile remain on her lips as she refuses any question from J’onn and Winn of her mood. Both of them coming to their own conclusions about her attitude, and both being wrong. She’s standing at the till asking Winn about his latest project involving some form of creation his mother has prohibited when her phone rings, something she isn’t accosted to it doing other than for one person.

“Kara.” She says picking up the phone. Winn nods to her in goodbye as Alex takes her leave.

On the other end of the phone, Kara breathes slowly into the phone that Alex can hear she is holding too close.

“Kara?” Alex repeats getting panicked.

“Alex! I don’t mean to alarm you. But I think you have a burglar.” Kara whispers.

Alex laughs, “No, that’s just Sawyer.”

“Who now?” Kara then shouts down the phone suddenly not bothered about her volume.

“Sawyer. She’s a girl who’s been staying with me for a few days.” Alex realises once the words have left her mouth how ridiculously unfazed she must sound to Kara. If Alex would have said those same words to herself a week ago, should have likely have responded with a long string of curse words, and yet Maggie’s stay was more than ordinary to her by now.

There was a pause over the phone and Alex wondered momentarily whether Kara had hung up.

“So, if you know here, I can just go in.” Kara states and Alex can hear the car door open.

“No!” She shouts down the phone in response. There’s no telling how Maggie will react to Kara just walking in and making herself at home. Considering her refusal to see anyone or be seen by anyone, it’s likely it wouldn’t go down well.

“What?” Kara shouts back, the car door closes.

“Can you just… wait?” Alex asks hearing Kara huff down the phone. She can just imagine Kara’s face right now, the crinkle making a legendary performance.

“You just want me to wait in the car like a dog?”

“We both know you’re a puppy deep down.”

There’s another long pause on the line and Alex takes this as Kara following instructions.

“Thank you,” She then hangs up and runs to the boat.


	7. Mamihlapinatapai (noun) - a silent acknowledgement and understanding between two people, who are both wishing or thinking the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry the chapter are taking longer. uni has begun, it's intense. but i'll try to keep uploading :) I wanna finish this as much as you, i swear

Kara stands dumbfounded as Alex finishes explaining the situation and why a stranger is now staying with her. Well, she explained most of why. She explained about pulling her up in the net, she explained her not wishing to see people. What she did not explain was the unexplainable comfort Alex felt when Maggie was around, the way that Alex had finally been able to express what she had burdened so long. What she didn’t explain what how it felt when Maggie held her, because some things, certain things were left better unsaid.

Her little sister stood bemused by it all, trying to take it all in but finding it slightly too tasking to comprehend how her sister, who hardly spoke to the neighbours in town could accept and be happy with the current living situation.

Kara opens her mouth a few times in half-attempts to settle her confused mind with the abundance of questions. But the only one makes it way to the surface, “Is she a mermaid?”

Alex scoffs, happy that Kara isn’t shouting of her insanity, and instead is playing on it, “No. She isn’t a mermaid.”

Kara nods, “A selkie then.” She confirms with herself.

“What the hell is a selkie?”

“A kind of seal woman. They come out of the sea, lose their seal coats and live on land until the sea calls her back. You hear them singing out on Seal Rock.” Kara explains brightly. It was clear she taught elementary kids. No other job would have suited her better.

“Well, Sawyer didn’t have a seal coat… whatever that is.” Alex states, “But she does sing.”

“She does!?” Kara exclaims and Alex can almost hear the squeal from the back of her throat.

Alex nods, “She does. In a language I don’t recognise.”

“That would be Selk.” Kara laughs before taking off towards the house.

Alex shakes her head laughing to herself before the reality of Kara walking towards the house sinks in fully. She’s suddenly alert.

“Wait!” She shouts, “She don’t know you’re coming. I… should go in first. You know… so she isn’t scared.” Alex explains and Kara nods in agreement with narrowed eyes.

Alex enters the house first, her heart in the mouth, scared of how Maggie will react to Kara’s presence. The worry leaves her once she sees Maggie wearing one of Alex’s shirts lounging across the sofa like she lives there. Alex supposes in a way she does. It’s not as though Alex is going to ask her to leave anytime soon, and she has the faintest feeling Maggie knows this too.

She doesn’t look to Alex as she hears the door open, she’s too engrossed in the book open in her lap. “There’s a hot cocoa on the side for you,” Maggie tells her absently and Alex’s eyes flit towards the kitchen and beams.

“Maggie,” Alex begins and Maggie looks up alert from the tone Alex uses, “You know I mentioned my sister?”

Maggie nods slowly.

“Well, she’s staying here for a few days.” Alex blurts out as she steps to the side to reveal a smiling Kara.

Maggie jolts in shock and cowers slightly at the sight of the stranger who was now approaching her in perhaps a more than enthusiastic manner.

As Kara reaches out to embrace Maggie in a hug, Maggie looks over Kara’s shoulder to Alex who is standing as helplessly as Maggie feels. She shrugs her shoulders and takes a breath. Maggie tries to relax into the embrace, but it just feels a little awkward. She’s not one to hugging usually, especially not people she only met a few seconds prior.

“Kara,” Maggie says once Kara has pulled back and is holding Maggie at arm’s length to get a better look at her. Maggie feels vulnerable under Kara’s gaze, as though her eyes can see into her mind and read all the secrets she’s been keeping. Kara continues to smile, though, so Maggie assumes she can’t.

“Kara, perhaps you want to stop intimidating my guest?” Alex suggests placing a hand on Kara’s shoulder for her to break her eye contact. Even Alex is beginning to feel uncomfortable by the intimacy and it’s not her on the receiving end of it, for once. Alex had been living under her sister’s caring gaze for so long, she was half glad that someone else was on the receiving end. However, she felt like Maggie was a special case, a case which Alex wanted no one to have any part of other than her. She considered it protective friendship.

“So, Maggie. Alex says she found you in the water.” Kara begins slumping into the sofa and taking one of the cushions, hugging it close to her.

Maggie looks to Alex for help, though Alex shrugs again and goes to the kitchen, to begin with dinner. Maggie slumps onto the sofa next to Kara, though now feeling less comfortable in the space she has splayed out across not moments before.

Alex watched as Kara and Maggie spoke out of her earshot. She watched as Maggie looks up to the kitchen every moment she can to see Alex with eyes soft asking for help. Eventually the looks pass, eventually, it turns from one asking for help and instead when Maggie glances up it’s for no reason than to meet Alex’s glance in reassurance. Her face softens, she begins smiling more and relaxes into the sofa. Before Alex makes it back into earshot, Maggie has warmed to Kara’s presence.

It’s a gift that Kara can make everyone warm up to her so quickly. Alex used to envy Kara for this gift, but she can’t keep up the smiling for that long.

“So tell me about my seal coat.” Maggie teases Kara once Kara has excitably told her about the Selkie myths.

“You lose it when you get out of the water. And you can't go back in until you find it again.” Kara leans towards Maggie now, also feeling more comfortable in this stranger’s company. “And if you do find it and bury it on land, you can stay for seven years, and you cry seven tears.”

“That sounds kinda boring to me. Waiting to cry for seven years?” Maggie jokes.

“You can often find unexpected happiness with a...,” Kara stumbles.

“Are you lost for words?” Maggie suggests, but Kara isn’t. She looks back to the kitchen where Alex is stood watching obliviously over the scene. She watches as Alex watches over Maggie caringly and with such admiration.

“A landsman, that’s what.” She recited from the story she tells the kids at the school. “Selkie women often find unexpected happiness with a landsman.”

Maggie too is looking to the kitchen now, but almost as an automatic reaction. She speaks to herself, “What about landswomen?” She says and Kara almost doesn’t catch it. Almost. Maggie looks back to Kara smiling warmly as though she’d been caught out of her own daydream.

“Your cheek is wet,” Kara says reaching out to wipe the single tear that had fallen from Maggie's eye. It takes Maggie by shock but she ignores it’s reasoning and plays it off.

“Is that one of the seven tears?” Maggie jokes as Kara holds it on her finger for a second longer.

“Maybe.” Kara says, “You’ve only six left.” She then wipes it on her jeans as Alex calls them for dinner.

* * *

 

The night passes by in the blink of an eye as the Danvers sisters and the Sawyer sit discussing most topics under the sun. All except Maggie’s history, she manages to steer away from that one each time it mentioned. She plays along to Kara’s story of the Selkie whenever it comes up quickly moving on afterwards. She thinks no one realises, but Kara does. She’s dubious about the woman that Alex seems to hold so dear. She doubts Maggie’s intentional harm on Alex, on anyone. But she still knows the danger of histories and secrets better than most. She can see clear as Maggie avoidance that the glances shared between Alex and Maggie are too deep, too long, too glazed to be platonic. She congratulates Alex in her own mind for it, for allowing herself to have gotten this far. But she knows she shouldn’t bring it up out loud. She knows her sister more than she knows anyone else in the world and her sister’s talent is withdrawing from situations that scare her emotionally. Hand her a stormy day and she’ll venture into it despite the fear it provokes. Hand her a horror movie any day of the week, but present her with a matter of her own mind. Of confronting what she buries deep inside and she’ll run without looking back. Kara has no doubt that whatever is going on with Maggie will fall into that category, and Kara isn’t ready for Alex to let go of it.

They laugh over anecdotes that Kara and Alex share trying to embarrass one another, and of course, Alex is the only one to feel embarrassment as Maggie laughs over all of Alex’s mishaps. As she does so, she finds Alex’s hand by her side and clutches it to hold tightly whenever Alex seems to look as though she wants to run out.

There’s something about the handholding that sends Alex’s heart into a frenzy. She can’t quite place it, but it feels like the feeling of holding Maggie’s hand in her own is more intimate than she has ever been with another person. That is until they grow comfortable with sitting that way side by side on the sofa and Maggie slowly shifts her hand. She flattens the palm against Alex’s and Alex suddenly feels the heat radiating from Maggie’s palm. She tries to ignore it as though she feels nothing unusual from it and is listening to Kara’s story about the time she fell through the roof. But the words get lost in the air before they reach her ears. Maggie’s fingers graze over Alex’s and begin to curl through Alex’s until Maggie curls her thumb around Alex’s thumb and holds on tightly. Alex feels vulnerable and hot rise on the back of her neck from the contact. She feels as though the world has shifted slightly beneath them and that everyone can see the change on her face.

Kara carries on, she knows, but she carries on. She’s seen as Maggie interlaced her fingers with her sister’s and how Alex’s face turns red and terrified. But she continues with her story, knowing none of it is being listened to. The two women in the sofa by her are too involved in their own story which is playing out as she speaks. Kara can’t wait till she gets to tell this story back to them, but there’s more to come yet. A whole lot more.

* * *

 

Maggie takes the room she’s been sleeping in the last few nights. Kara and Alex take the other room. It seems like a given to them all, and there really isn’t any reason why to contradict the choice. Yet something lies over all their heads. That unspoken idea of Maggie and Alex taking one room and Kara taking the other. It’s never said, it’s never suggested or put forward. But they all think it. If only briefly.

“Alex,” Kara whispers into the darkness after moments of deliberating how to say it.

“What, Kara?” Alex whispers back in a sleepier tone.

“I like Maggie. She’s nice.”

There’s silence for an extended moment within which Kara begins to wonder is Alex has fallen to sleep. And then comes a large breath as Alex sighs and says in mumbled words, “Yeah. I like her too.”

But Kara has no doubt that Alex means something different when she says it.


	8. Chary (Adjective) - cautiously or suspiciously reluctant to do something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is quite short but i feel it needed putting....

Even though Kara cannot for the life of her make an edible meal, it does not stop her from attempting. She manages to burn toast, slick egg to the frying pan and set the smoke detector off from the bacon that has turned to charcoal in the oven. She stands with a tea towel in her hand wafting the ceiling, desperate to get the bugger to quiet down.

Alex, having woken the past few days to Maggie’s peaceful moving around in the kitchen along with a morning cup of coffee, rolls over waking to a disappointing sound. She loves her sister, more than anyone or anything in the world, but sometimes she does wish she would admit defeat in the culinary area. Especially before ten am.  

“Did you sleep well?” Alex asks upon entering the room.

Kara looks up from the pan she’s now trying to scrape clean, wipes the hair from her face with the back of her hand and smiles brightly. “Wonderfully. I’m so glad you got the windows fixed, finally,” She beams.

“Maggie did it,” Alex says without a second thought.

Kara smiles to herself as she turns back to the sink. “Mmmhmm.” She mumbles to herself.

Alex leans over the stove to try and make out food in the rubble.

“There’s toast and eggs and ba—,” Kara begins pointing to what look like indistinguishable charcoal piles.

“I’ll stick with coffee.”

“Coffee isn’t a nutritious way to start the day,” Kara warns waving the sponge in Alex’s face.

“Neither’s what’s in that pan.” Alex fires back, pouring coffee into two mugs; one for herself and one for Maggie before taking to Maggie’s room. Kara stands, shoulders slumped looking at the pans and plates of food in disappointment.

 

There’s a gentle knock on the door before Alex lets herself in and finds Maggie lying in the double bed peaceful but not asleep. Standing there, Alex feels she could exist in this moment for the rest of her life if time would allow it. She preserves the moment for as long as social etiquette dictates before taking in a breath which wakes her sense and walking towards the side of the bed. Maggie’s eyes follow Alex around the room without moving, a smile forming on her lips watching her host cautiously make her way around her own house.

“Sorry if the smoke alarm woke you.” Alex apologises before holding out the mug in her hand.

Maggie pushes herself up so she’s sitting back to the wall and takes the mug, hugging it tightly. She isn’t cold, but it’s a comfort. She takes presses the mug to her lips and breathes in the steam, not taking a sip for the heat she fears would burn her tongue.

Maggie’s hair sits in tighter curls than usual, her eyes puffy from sleep and drowsy expression. She looks up the Alex who is still stood by the side of her bed, admiring with a smile. Maggie pats the side of the bed gesturing for Alex to sit by her side, which she does, slowly.

They sit in the silence of the morning together, occasionally hearing Kara bang in the kitchen followed by a lighter version of swearing that doesn’t fully commit itself to swearing. It’s peaceful, Alex looking over at Maggie every so often who is doing the same to Alex. They both finish their coffee but hold the mugs close afterwards. It’s a routine Alex could get used to. Eventually Maggie leans against Alex, her head falling onto Alex’s shoulder and taking a deep breath Alex can tell she had been holding. Alex takes a breath in and holds it in her lungs till it burns, too afraid to let it go.

Maggie notices as Alex’s movement has ceased from the gentle shoulder movement that comes from taking steady breaths in and out. Maggie regrets her ease with Alex as soon as she feels Alex tense under her head. _Too forward,_ she thinks.

“Do you have to sail today?” Maggie asks moving back to her previous upright position.

Alex nods, finding her voice slightly to stutter out confirmation.

“Can I help again?”

Alex nods again before pushing herself from the bed. “You’ll need to wrap up warm.” She says before heading out the room.

 

Kara watches Alex as she walks briskly from the room where Maggie is staying to her own room. She smiles and shakes her head. Kara might not be a great chef, but one area she excels in is knowing her sister’s thoughts. Yet here is one she has never seen before, and Kara can hazard a guess as to work out why that is.

 

“You’ll be safe, right?” Kara tells Alex doing up her coat as though she is a proud mother sending her child off to school. Alex rolls her eyes.

“Yes, Kara.”

“And you’ll keep Maggie safe?”

Alex bites the inside of her lip and looks down the peer where Maggie is stood in far few too many layers looking back at Alex and Kara waiting. “She’ll look after me,” Alex mumbles to herself.

Kara stands on the peer, clutching her coat tightly around herself and waving out at the Sawyer as it floats out of sight. Kara’d never been out on the boat since she and Alex were both little girls and their father guided them through every step. The boat was the scar to Kara that his bedroom was to Alex. To Kara the boat was his, and always his. It’s why she was grateful Alex would have never sold it. Upon that vessel, they’d celebrated birthdays, and upon that vessel, Jeremiah had stood each morning to wave them goodbye for their day.

She knew that Alex shared the same feelings towards the boat. The same closeness to their father as she stood out at the seal which is why it was perhaps so surprising to watch Alex sail away with another aboard. Someone new, out of the family who shared none of those memories of Jeremiah as the girls did. I warmed a spot inside Kara that Alex could look past Maggie’s unfamiliarity and find a closeness to happily sit in the spot her closeness to her father did. But there was a small part of her that wondered where this would go. If Alex could look past this, then what else would she ignore. And would she? Would Alex notoriously single Danvers be able to keep this going once it reached a point of new friendship? Kara had seen how quickly Alex walked from Maggie’s room that morning.

Yet there she stood on the boat, a face bright and sunny showing off the sea to a girl she’d pulled from it.


	9. exposed (Adjective) - revealed; unprotected to danger; to surrender control of information

“Can I help?” Maggie askes eagerly, jumping from side to side as the boat rocked atop the waves. Alex looks up from the mess of net she has in her hand trying to untangle. The sight catches her by surprise as she never doubts is can ever fail to.

“You can man the tiller,” she says and she drops the net to the deck and steps along the unstable pathway to the wheel shadowed by Maggie. “Right. Straight out to sea.” Alex explains and takes Maggie’s hand to place it on the wood of the wheel. A chill runs through both of them; Alex puts it off to how much of a wind pocket the boat can be, Maggie knows what the feeling is that shoots through her light lightening escaping from her fingertips.

Alex runs back out into the open to pick up the net before Maggie has any time to look back and see the fear on Alex’s face. It’s for the best really, if Maggie were to catch a glimpse of it, she would have cast doubt upon her own feelings.

Maggie lost in her own thoughts watches Alex intently as Alex focusses solely on her knot. The boat jerks almost knocking Alex off her feet.

“Keep her steady, would you?” Alex says, not looking up. Maggie is tempted to purposefully cause the boat to sway again just to Alex would look up, so she would know that whatever had caused Alex to withdraw earlier was not irritation. Instead, as she looks to Alex another boat in the distance catches her eye as it nears. Maggie panics and drops like a puppet whose strings have just been cut. The loud thud as Maggie hits the floor causes Alex to snap her head to Maggie in concern. She follows Maggie’s glance to the sea and finds Maggie’s reason for the quick fall.

“Fisheries Board.” She then looks back to Maggie who is still refusing to stand, “How are you gonna steer the boat now?”

Maggie looks up and thinks on it for a while before stretching her leg out and up the wheel and begins holding the wheel stead with her feet. Alex is shocked for a second before finding herself in a state after shock, of not quite being able to find words. She hums for a few second before finally being able to turn her glance towards Maggie’s face which is now smirking from Alex’s deer-in-the-headlights expression.

“You can’t guide a boat with your foot.” Alex laughs, finally able to crack a smile.

Maggie gleams back to her, “Am I not being well?” She teases and keeps eye contact with Alex who finds herself unable to remove her eyes away either.

“I never said that.” Alex mumbles inaudibly to Maggie, almost inaudibly to herself.

Suddenly, a thought crosses into Alex mind and she blinks and looks away quickly, “Shit!” She shouts before rushing out again and picking up the net.

After many a fumbled attempt, Alex finally has the net untangled and lowers it into the water. The two of them wait briefly before Maggie looks out to Alex who’s watching over the side in disappointment. She opens her mouth and finds that the song from the previous day comes to her lips, “Sai che. Sono tornado a rivedere. Quel posto in cui andavamo insieme—“ She sings before being cut off by Alex’s soft squeal.

“My God!” Alex shouts and rushes to pull up the net which proves a greater difficulty than usual.

“What?” Maggie calls as she now stands up knowing the stranger’s boats have gone from sight.

“Salmon,” Alex states with a dubious tone. “You don’t get salmon trawling. Only with a gill net.” Alex thinks allowed as the net raised high above the boat. Alex pulls on the string holding the net closes and a flood of salmon rain down covering the surface of the storage section of the boat. Hand on head, Alex stand in disbelief staring at the sheer quantity of fish now flapping on her deck. “Jesus Christ.”

“What?” Maggie asks leaning over Alex’s shoulder to see the fish.

“The Fisheries are going to come on board.” Alex says looking out to see the boat nearing them again.

Maggie backs away suddenly as though having gotten an electric shock. Panic maps across her entire body as she looks around for a place to hide. It only takes one person to see her; one person and her safety in the house by the seafront is shattered into thousands of pieces. One person to start asking questions that she can’t answer, or spread rumours she won’t be able to control. How long till they find her; the ones who she’s run from finally? And she knows to Alex’s eyes it must look like paranoia, she can settle for that. Because one Alex learns the truth it all changes. She doubts she’ll look at her in the same way again.

They hide Maggie below deck in the cold cabin where they keep the spare nets. She listens as new feet walk above her stamping across the deck heavily; probably wearing thick waterproof boots. She strains her ears to hear the conversation between Alex and the fisheries;

“Lads,” Alex addresses in a relaxed manner.

“See you caught salmon.” One of the men asks.

“Yup. Trawling.” There’s self-doubt in Alex’s tone as if she herself is dubious of the fact.

“And you expect us to believe that?” The man asks, laughing to his colleague who laughs along with him. Alex doesn’t laugh and Maggie can imagine her straight-faced glare at the two men.

“It’s true.” Alex deadpans sternly causing all laughter to cease. It’s quiet for a while. Maggie tries to listen to anything except the sound of the waves lapping against one another, but there is none.

“Show us your gill nets.” One of the men demands the words going over Maggie’s head in both physical and metaphorical sense.

“In the hold.” Alex answers as the door above Maggie is swung open forcefully letting light into the hold. Maggie backs away from the light streams below the nets.

One of the men reaches in and grabs hold of the net covering Maggie. She holds her breath, uncomfortable with their proximity. “That’s not wet.” He says in complete surprise.

“I told you, I didn’t use it,” Alex repeats and Maggie can see her stood watching over the hold now, arms crossed and angry.

The men pull more at the net covering Maggie until they catch sight of her and pull it off her completely. One of them turns to Alex, “There’s a girl in here, Danvers.”

Alex looks straight at Maggie with apologetic expression. She’s been seen. The whole world knows practically now. She no longer has control over what people will speculate. “Is that illegal?” Alex bites back to the man who now looks back at Maggie with confused eyes. Though Maggie feels far too revealed, in that moment, she also feels the warm blanket of Alex’s words wash over her. Alex’s stern tone to someone speaking of Maggie in a sense other than friendly.

“No. But… it’s unusual.” The man replies.

“Ask her how we caught the salmon.”

The man looks to Maggie and complies, “How did you catch them?”

Maggie looks up the Alex as the two lock eyes Alex’s mouth twitches into a smile, “Trawling.” Maggie answers with more certainty than Alex seemed to earlier.

“And you want us to believe in fairy tales?” The second man laughs, the quieter one who has little to say.

“Yes,” Maggie answers with no joke to her tone. She looks to Alex again who’s struggling to conceal a grin. _Fairy tales_ , Maggie thinks. Like the ones told to her as a child of the Price and Princess who fall in love from the single glance. Maggie thinks she falls all over again each time Alex’s eyes meet hers. It’s how she knows fairy tales must be real; because that little flutter where her body seems to fall numb for a second at a time can be described as nothing else but magical.

“And there you have it,” Alex says directly to her. It’s no longer about salmon and a small part of them know it. “Close it up, lads,” Alex tells the men, now breaking eye contact with Maggie after what feels like a lifetime and only a split second simultaneously. All their moments seem to feel similar to this; flickering milliseconds and eternities all happening within whatever space of time.

Maggie hears as the fisheries take their leave, her own blood pumping too loud to listen properly speak farewells to Alex who before long lifts up the door to the hold and offers out her hand. “So, they saw you.” Alex states as Maggie finds her footing on the deck with much aid from Alex, much more aid than she really needs. “Is that alright?” Alex then asks once she’s able to read Maggie’s expression.

“No.” Maggie’s quick answer offers no emotion, “Means they’ll talk.” She finishes bitterly.

“Perhaps.” Alex tries but she has no doubt they will. It’s a small town, everyone’s news is everyone’s. No secrets are possible in a town such as theirs. A newcomer will be open to gossip for a week, a newcomer accompanying Alex Danvers will spread quicker than wildfire. And a newcomer found beneath the deck when an astonishing amount of salmon is caught will probably be that vacant story shared in reminisces for years to come.

“What will they say?” Maggie asks, but she’s asking herself. She’s questioning how far the news will spread about her whereabouts. Too far and it becomes dangerous.

“Take your pick.” Alex says offhandedly, “Danvers. Salmon. Miracles. A girl.” Alex lists looking out at the water not baring to look Maggie in the face in that moment from the shame of having given again the one thing Maggie seemed to want to hold between only those two; her identity. “I’m going to the harbour. Do you want me to drop you off?” Alex suggests, shoving her hands into her soggy pockets.

“It’s done, isn’t it?” Maggie mumbles solemnly.

“What’s done?”

“I’ve been seen.” Maggie sighs and sits herself against the side of the boat feeling exposed.


	10. Gezellig (adjective) - more than coziness

They sailed along the seafront, Maggie squirming under the glances that inevitably came her way. She tried to stand proudly on the desk of The Sawyer, but all she could feel was the itch in her ears knowing that the words she saw people whispering to one another with eyes on her, were probably about her. Alex seemed unfazed by the attention. Being one of the only female sailors in the town it wasn’t rare for her to be the topic of conversation. She was the butt of the joke, the bet for failure. It wasn’t news to her that people doubted her proficiency on the waves, but the words washed off her with the water. When she’d been younger before she moved away the words had stung, cut deep into her skin like razors drawing out all her insecurities and doubts. It had been different then, about money or looks. About the fact, she chose soccer instead of cheerleading or science societies rather than going out drinking. She’d never had a boyfriend and stuck out like a sore thumb. She felt it all. And then she grew and realised the things that she thought had plagued her were assets. She grew in age and in person. Grew proud of her abilities and as the wounds of the words healed, Alex’s ability to shield herself from them improved. She got a full scholarship to University a reasonable distance from home, one of the only ones in the village and felt a sense of karma as she was carted away in the back of her father’s hatchback while all those who had bullied her remained behind. When she herself had returned, there was the ambient sound of torment to welcome her home. They thought she hadn’t heard as they whispered about her duty as a daughter, about her failing out of University, about her inability to live outside the town’s perimeter. But she had Winn and J’onn and Kara and there little more she needed than that.

“They’re all looking,” Maggie states watching as the eyes follow her like an animal in a cage at the zoo.

“It’s a small town. Everyone stares. It’s rare we get news such as this.” Alex smiles to Maggie who melts under the warmth. “And what’s wrong with being seen?”

Maggie knows it’s not the town’s people she’s referring to the glances of, it's everyone Maggie has been afraid to confront since she had been brought up from the ocean. “Nothing.” She lies. “When you look good.” Maggie smiles chin out to Alex.

“You look stunning,” Alex replied and the compliment lingers between them for a while before it settles into them comfortably.

J’onn watches out of the window as the salmon are brought in. He’s watching the girl who stands on the boat, trying to help but not knowing how. He watches as she looks over to Alex at every opportunity and how when Alex looks back they share a glance more intimate than J’onn has seen Alex be with anyone. Entire monologues are transmitted in those glances from one to another, a code they’d be shocked they’d even formed. J’onn doesn’t mention it to Alex, he knows better. He just nods to her warmly and pays her for the fish.

“Can I buy you a present?” Alex asks Maggie as they walk along the streets, in plain view for the first time.

“Yes. Clothes.” Maggie says admiring the jackets and shirts in the store windows.

“My clothes not quite cutting it?” Alex jokes.

“They’re lovely. I could live in your clothes forever, but they don’t quite fit right.” Alex looses the last part of the sentence for a bit. Her mind having to actively replay the white noise she’d stopped listening to. _Maggie Sawyer wearing her clothes forever_. The thought runs over and over like a faulty VCR tape. To Alex, this is a promise. A daydream she’ll keep locked away.

“Doesn’t fit?” Alex repeats to acknowledge she’d heard more than only what she’d paid attention to.

“Too long.” Maggie blushes red.

“Ahhh.” Alex nods, “Of course. You are only little.” Alex jokes.

Maggie swats Alex’s arm playfully, “Rude. I’m perfect height.”

“Yes. Perfect.” Alex repeats and then leans her elbow on Maggie’s shoulder. “Perfect height for this.”

Maggie manoeuvres her head under Alex’s arm so it’s draped over her shoulder more comfortably. Alex doesn’t move it, it rests there as Maggie then brings her arm up to around Alex’s waist as they walk side by side. Alex doesn’t flinch. It barely crosses her mind that she would until Kara comes bounding up the street towards them in long strides and Alex’s reality comes back to her. She takes her arm away and shoves her hand in her pocket quickly as Kara then stands in front of them smiling wide.

“What’re you two up to?” Kara asks brightly.

“Shopping.” Maggie smiles back with as much enthusiasm as Kara had given to her.

Alex’s words take a little longer to catch up.

“Thank goodness. Alex, I love you but you can’t force your guest to wear your shirts forever. They’re on the out.” Kara states causing Maggie to giggle to herself and lightly nudge Alex with her elbow.

“There’s nothing wrong with my clothes,” Alex says indignantly.

“A lot of them have seen better days. Some even better years.” Kara replies. Kara then turns to Maggie and takes her arm in hers as they stroll together down the street, “When we were younger, Alex used to wear shoes until they literally fell off her feet.” Kara tells Maggie, leaving Alex trailing behind the two of them. There’s a comfort knowing that Kara and Maggie get on, but there’s a sense of wishing Kara didn’t take the friendship as an excuse to tell Maggie of all of the stories of her youth. Times were heavily different.

“Now our town is what you called sartorially challenged,” Kara explains pulling Maggie by the arm into a clothing store on the street.

“What does that mean?” Maggie asks taking glances as the racks of dresses and skirts.

“A supermodel’s nightmare,” Kara replies racing off into the depths of the store after releasing Maggie from her grip.

“Good thing, I’m not a supermodel then,” Maggie mumbles to herself out of Kara’s earshot but within Alex’s. To Alex, she could be. But to Alex, Maggie could stop the world on its axis and she wouldn’t be surprised.

Kara dragged Maggie in and out of store after store picking out dresses and skirts that Kara stated (and Maggie pretended she agreed) matched her skin tone, eye colour and hair colour. Alex watched, holding the clothes and coats giggling to herself as Maggie was pulled by the arm back and forth. Thrust into changing rooms with new clothes to try on before having to make appearances as though she were a model on a catwalk. Maggie stands still as a board watching as Kara instructs her to spin before shaking her head and sending her back in.

They finish with Maggie wearing a wardrobe identical to Alex’s, though fitted. Jeans that hugged her curves tightly, and shirts that hung off her nicely. Kara’s unsurprised to learn that Alex’s ideal guest also seemed to wear her ideal wardrobe. The two of them were crafted from the same elements at the beginning of time. Repetitively formed brought together to create the two women.

Spectator glance through the windows of stores to try and catch glimpses of Alex’s guest. They squint at her and mutter to one another behind walking down the street, but they have nothing. They don’t know anything about her, not even a name. They try and listen as the three girls talk to one another jovially, and they hear ‘Maggie’. They latch onto it, and suddenly the stranger is familiar enough for them to make assumptions. Assumptions of her history, her reason for intruding upon the town, her reason for the Danvers to know her. Their speculations and suggestions aren’t unusual the same thing happened when Miss Smythe moved to the town, and now she was the main gas lighter to the gossip. It was just a natural life cycle.

Yet, what struck them as strange was that Maggie seemed oblivious to their mutters. Too enthralled in Alex’s words, Alex’s expressions and actions the rest of the world seemed to fall out of existence. All her worry of being seen when she didn’t notice when she was.

“Winn,” Alex shouts upon entering the Schott’s store, little care as to who she interrupted for annoyed. Maggie swatted Alex on the arm as she walked alongside her, now wary of the eyes that fell upon her. Kara giggled at her sister’s newfound confidence and lack of care.

Winn looked up from the cash register where he seemed to be giving a great deal of thought to it. “Both Danvers. What a treat.” She grins. It was rare he got to see Kara since she’d moved away, but each time they saw one another it was as though no time had passed from those days of breaking science equipment in the laps and spending too long in nurses’ offices. “And this…” He turns his attention to Maggie, “must be Alex’s friend from med school?” he guesses looking to Alex.

Quickly, his attention is subverted as Kara snorts a laugh. “Med school? You don’t speak to anyone from med school, Alex.” Kara almost laughs with delight.

Winn, confused, looks back to Alex for an explanation.

“I pulled her up in my fishing net,” Alex mutters causing a raised eyebrow from Winn.

“Wow…” He exhales, “I didn’t realise the saying was so literal.”

“What saying?” Maggie asks, her first input in the conversation.

“That there’s plenty more fish in the sea.” Winn jokes smiling to Maggie and then each of the Danvers.

There’s a sense, like being tucked into bed or walking out of a storm, where comfort washes through each pore in your body. Whatever discomfort you have been removed from seems like a distant memory and you relax into clear thoughts. Even if this feeling only lasts for a moment until another thought comes to mind, or until the blanket it ripped from you, but it’s there for at least a moment. Unmeasurable, but noticeable. Alex feels it then, as Winn smiles upon her and Maggie moves closer so their sides are touching. It’s a feeling of pride that comes over her, comfortable pride. She’s not sure why, but people’s approval of Maggie matters to her. She’s not sure how long Maggie is going to stay but she knows it not so short that she can keep up the vagueness of beginnings. Kara watches Alex’s smile from a place deeper than just her lips and beams with her own comfort, knowing Alex _is_ safe. Even if it’s not how she’d envisioned.

Maggie doesn’t feel it. Because she senses her past suddenly watching up with her. Sailing over the horizon is what she swam from, nearing faster than comfort will allow her.


	11. Rainen no kono hi mo issho ni waratteiyoh - Popular Japanese chat-up line meaning "this time next year let's be laughing together".

Both Danvers had been whisked away by Kara’s prearranged plans for a ‘girls-day-out’, something Alex had been less than enthusiastic about when Kara had surprised her. Alex had been surprised alright, but perhaps in an alternative way to the one that Kara had intended with her bookings. What was worse was that Kara hadn’t told Alex where they were specifically going. Alex had begged Maggie to feign some form of illness to make her stay. Maggie giggled as Alex pleaded, latching onto her like a child being taken to day-care.

The sister drove up, Alex slouching in the passenger side, watching Maggie as she was driven away with an angry expression. Maggie knew the sisters were drastically different, it didn’t take a genius to work out. From one glance at them, it was obvious that while they shared a surname they differed on most other matter. But she also knew that Kara wasn’t so naïve to plan a trip with her sister that she _wouldn’t_ have enjoyed. Kara knew Alex better than anyone else on this Earth. She had no doubt Alex would come back that afternoon with an equally angry expression because they had to leave wherever Kara was taking them.

She’d been forbidden to clean. It was one of Alex’s only rules for the day. She should have a day of doing nothing. But as Maggie sat on the sofa she spied the dust on the mantelpiece and spotted the mug rim stains on the coffee table and the fact there were water marks on the windows. She moved to the bedroom she’d been given, but for her, there was still the aching feeling of whatever she didn’t know about the room. It felt as though memories walked through the room and lingers, piling atop her shoulders as soon as she entered. The fact was that the room bore a reminder of Mr and Mrs Danvers who had previously owned the room, but it felt a little more than that. As though this was where the entire family previously grew. Now it felt severed. Sure, Alex and Kara were still alive, bonding and living. But it seemed like Alex had stopped growing. Maggie knew nothing of National City other than the anecdotes Kara shared, and from that, it sounded like any other metropolitan area. Yet it was more, it was where Kara grew. Where she became Kara Danvers rather than the younger Danvers sister. It felt like Alex was stuck in her role of older sister, even if the people who the term was about were all gone. There was no younger sister living with her now to look over, there were no parents to be cared for by. There was just the empty shell of a home where a family had left a girl behind.

* * *

 

The water outside the house was cold against Maggie’s bare skin, but she lay on her back, arms stretches out regardless. Her ears below the water, her finger spread as the water moved through the gaps like silk. It engulfed her, and at the same time, she owned it. There was no one who came near the house except the sister, and while they were away Maggie felt she could roam the entire ocean and never leave that spot. How small she felt existing within the water, but how powerful she felt as she made currents with a slight jolt of the leg. 

* * *

 

The car pulled up outside the Schott Store as Kara piled out followed closely by a reluctant Alex. She could see Maxwell stood in the doorway and would have rather no dealt with him today. But Kara had insisted that they get snacks for the journey. It was an easy choice for Alex as she picked up a pack of Red Vines and then stood to wait for Kara to make what seemed like a life or death decision.

“It’s only a pack of candy, Kara.” Alex groans as Kara stood with a box of Mike and Ikes in one hand and Milk Duds in the other trying to make her choice. She put the Milk Duds down, Alex sighed in relief until Kara then picked up Peeps and the whole thing started again.

Alex groans loudly throwing her head back in annoyance. “You just go get a drink for us, will you?” Kara then says still staring at the candy shelves.

Alex was quick to appreciate the out, until she realised that the drinks were near the entrance, and so by Maxwell.

She _tried_ to ignore him, she really did. But his intrusive glances pierced a little too deep for her to ignore. “Lord.” She sneers standing to face him, his trademark smug grin spreading across his face.

“Where’s your water baby?” Maxwell asked bitterly. It amused Alex how he could be so bitter about the fact Alex now has a woman she pulled from the sea living with her while even when she and he had been dating he wasn’t allowed to take a step inside her house.

“Her name is Sawyer.” Alex bites back as Maxwell laughs.

“Names after your papa’s boat? That’s kind of sad.”

“Not as sad as someone living off his daddy’s profit.”

Maxwell’s grin drops as he steps closer to Alex. She doesn’t move back or flinch, she merely readjusts her eye line. “Where does she sleep? Your water baby?”

“It’s nothing to you.”

“In that little shack of yours?”

“Watch it, Lord.” Alex threatens, feeling her nails dig into the palm of her hand.

“Watch _yourself_ , Danvers.” He pauses momentarily as he watched Kara walk over and take Alex’s hand in comfort.

“Maxwell.” Kara greets him, and Alex wished she wasn’t so nice.

“Kara. How’s National City?” His pleasantries bite at Alex like a dog at the ankles.

“Wonderful,” Kara replies with a sweet smile.

“You going to the regatta tomorrow?” Maxwell then asks looking to Alex as though taking pride for wasting her time.

“Yeah. We are all going to go, right?” Kara looks to Alex who hasn’t removed her eyes from Maxwell, like a lioness about to pounce on prey.

“The three of you?” Maxwell laughs, “Go diving for pearls?” He taunts.

“Something like that,” Kara replies and then stand between Alex and him to distract Alex from her tunnel vision of hate. “We should go.” She says. Alex is jolted from her daydream of drowning Maxwell in the sea and nods as they walk towards the counter. Winn seeming wary of Alex’s newly foul mood.

* * *

 

Pushing her head below the surface of the water, she felt the icy cold bit at her cheeks. She smiles despite it and blew out a breath sinking down further. Her lungs burned in her chest keeping her warm as she felt herself sink deeper and deeper into the sea. She’d made sure she wasn’t so far out that she’d have nothing to kick off when she’d feel her lungs thump against her ribs begging for air. It was a while before that point, she’d practised holding her breath to the point she would remain, sitting on the floor of the sea and feel at peace for a while before the lack of oxygen took hold. Years of pushing herself further and further until she thought she would have passed out.

She finally felt the ground beneath her toes when something other than the seaweed grazed her foot and she jolted. _It couldn’t be_. She almost begged aloud. Not here, not this far. She knew she had managed to travel this far, but surely, she hadn’t been followed the whole way to this spot by an inanimate object? She cursed the skies which seemed to be teasing her. Offering her some form of peace before ripping the rug from underneath her knocking her flat on her back unable to get up and fight against the demons of her past.

She kicked up to the surface, unsure if the water on her cheeks was just the sea or her own salt tears being shed. She dove back down to retrieve what haunted her. She couldn’t leave it there, within the waters for anyone to find. She had to remove it, bury it in the ground.

It was as Kara said, she had to bury her seal coat to remain on the land. She buried the remnants of her past to move on, to move away from it. She dug a deep hole in the back of the abandoned greenhouse and marked the position with a pot. Panic dissipated once she couldn’t see the hole anymore. Once she’d filled it in with her bare hands, grappling desperately at the soil to fill it. To cover over her previously.

Kara promised seven years. That’s what the fairy tale had said. If she buried it, she’d have seven years here with Alex, and she’d take it. She’d take whatever she could get. But seven years seemed like a promise she wasn’t sure fate was going to allow her. She cried her third tear sitting naked in the soil of the greenhouse wishing it were as simple as a burial to erase years.

* * *

 

The sisters returned before it got dark, Alex bouncing off of the walls with stories to tell Maggie. They’d gone to a paintball arena for the day, a trip that Kara had been planning an keeping a secret for months.

“It’s was incredible.” Alex squeezed. “I won, obviously. Kara can’t shoot someone to save her life.” Alex joked as she walked straight to the sofa where Maggie had been curled up under a blanket reading for the past few hours.

“I didn’t want to hurt you!” Kara exclaimed making the three of them a pot of tea and looking through the fridge as a hint for someone culinary capable to begin cooking.

“Kara was _covered_ in paint.” Alex laughed.

“And bruises,” Kara added. “If I’d known how much it hurt I wouldn’t have bought the tickets.”

“You’ll have to go again, I’m going for my birthday and you can’t say no to that,” Alex says.

“Watch me. You can take Maggie instead.” Kara says passing them their tea.

A silence washes over them. Alex’s birthday is ten months away. That’s ten months that they expect Maggie will still be staying here with Alex. It seems ridiculous, but they both notice how Alex’s instinctive action was to come and join Maggie under the blanket on the sofa as though they’d been doing so for years.

Kara sighs from the kitchen, “Well, I’m ready for dinner.” She’d given up on the subtle technique as Alex and Maggie both seem too lost in their own thoughts to pay attention to the opening and closing of cupboards that Kara is doing.

“I prepared a roast,” Maggie says jumping up from underneath her blanket and moving to the kitchen. She’s wearing Alex’s pyjamas, rolled up at the ends. Alex stays sat, watching Maggie move away from the sofa still caught up on the promise of ten months. Out on that hillside, she’d said forever, they both had and it seemed to settle in Alex’s mind well. She looked around the house as the pictures of her family, at the books they had collected from all the different phases of interest the Danvers’ went through. School projects were left around the room; the stool Alex had made in woodshop acting as a stand to the figure their parents had brought back from that trip to Kenya. Kara’s art pieces framed in home decorated frames on the walls.

Each surface of this place was a memory to Alex, and she wanted Maggie to be part of it. She wanted a picture of Maggie somewhere within the masses of them in the hallway, she wanted books of whatever weird subject Maggie took a liking to. Some form of creative project, either successful or not, to take up its own space in Alex’s home.

It dawned on her how she hadn’t added it herself since she had moved back in. There were no new photos she had added, nothing. As though the previous few years she had been living the same day in repeat. She knew if anyone’d suggested changing an inch of the house a few weeks ago, Alex would have shouted words about disrespect and pain. But now it felt as though one person’s promise of forever made her work towards tomorrow.

* * *

 

Sitting, with bellies full and plates emptied they all lean back in their chairs savouring their last taste.

“That was amazing.” Kara hums to herself, eyes closed in delight.

Alex nods in agreement, suddenly tired from the food.

“So how was your day in the house alone?” Kara asks Maggie who freezes wondering whether to mention what she found.

“I went for a swim.” Maggie smiles. Alex peers over at Maggie out of the corner of her eye and chuckles.

“In that water? You must have been freezing!?” Kara says frantically.

Maggie shakes her head. “She’s a… what did you say, Kara?” Alex asks.

“A Selkie?”

“Yes. A Selkie. Don’t feel the cold of the sea when you live in it, do you, Sawyer?” Alex asked sleepily.

Maggie smiles to herself. It’s nice to pretend in fairy tales with reality keeping its claws out.

“How long to they stay again?” Alex asks Kara, her forever still playing over and a layer of sleep causing it to surface to speech.

“Seven years if I bury my seal coat.” Maggie smiles.

“Seven years?” Alex smiles, “That’s all I get?”

The comment lingers on the minds of everyone in the room, Kara included to feels the shift from playful pretending. “Seven years. Unless her Selkie husband claims her back.” Kara watches as Maggie’s expression shifts and her gaze quickly diverts from Alex’s as if from shame.

“I don’t have a husband,” Maggie says, but she feels like she could still be pulled back at any moment from someone worse than a husband.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So from this point on, i think things will actually be revealed... I mean not completely because i still like a bit of mystery. but this is like the point when it starts winding to resolution...


	12. Cocok (adjective) - a perfect fit

Once the sun gently dipped into the sea, Alex’s eyes grew close to close as Maggie watched her head dip chuckling to herself. Even when threatening to headbutt the table, she was a dream. Kara peered to her watch anxiously. She wiped her mouth on her napkin before standing.

“I forgot! I told Winn I’d meet him for drinks this evening. He wants to introduce me to his new girlfriend; Lyra.” Kara babbles scrambling to collect the plates.

“Kara, we’ll sort this out,” Alex says, eyes still closed as she leans on her hands.

Kara kisses Alex on the cheek and then moves to do the same to Maggie.

Maggie, having never had this form of affection, even platonic. Her parents had never shown her affection, seeing her rather as a burden that she would have to prove herself to not be. She’s never had any siblings, never had a best friend, and romantic partners began and ended at sex. There had only been one person to look after her in what she now considered her previous life. The one that had ended before being rescued in a fishing net and beginning a new life in a cabin by the sea. There had been one, who promised too much and who every step of the way never failed to push the line of happiness further and further away.

Kara had known her only a few days, yet here she was treating her with more love than Maggie had ever been given before. So simple, but so much.

Kara left promptly, thick coat on her back, bag in hand and blew a kiss from the car window as she pulled away from the cabin.

“Do you want to go to bed?” Maggie asks, leaning forward to Alex to take her hand in her own. Alex flinches slightly at the contact that pulls her from her daydream, and Maggie, in turn, pulls her hand away.

Alex grabs it back, covering Maggie’s hand in both of hers, “Not yet. We need to clean this mess.”

“I can do it.” Maggie offers but Alex jumps to her feet and goes straight to the sink to put away the dry dishes from the drainer.

“I’m already here. And I’m awake now.” Alex smiles over her shoulder and she reaches up to put the cups in the top cupboard. As she lifts her arm, her shirt rides up a little flashing bare skin. Alex feels it, as the air softly grazes her skin, but she lingers. She watches as Maggie struggles to look away before lowering her arms again pridefully.

“I’ll wash. You dry.” Maggie says, throwing the towel at Alex and rolling up her sleeves.

Maggie collects the plates, piling them high by the side of her as she stands to the sink and running the hot water into the washbowl.

There’s something about the very action of rolling up her sleeves that send Alex’s knees weak.

They say few words as Maggie washes and passes dishes to Alex who then puts them away. The sound of even the tap running and the cupboards closing seemed muted to the pair as they seem enthralled in one another only. Once the last dish is passed to Alex, Maggie runs the hot tap again to wash her hands off from the grime of the dirty water.

Alex holds the towel tight in her hand, unsure of what to do as she stands watching Maggie wash her hands. It’s nothing, she sees people every day wash their hands, but she fights the sudden urge to wrap her arms around Maggie from behind and hold her tightly.

Instead, she sighs, wines the towel into a rope and whips the back of Maggie’s leg with it. Maggie jumps from the shock and turns, mouth open in surprise. Alex stifles any form of laughter and tries to pull an innocent face.

“What?” Alex asks to which Maggie, without Alex’s noticing cups a small amount of water in her hands and the splashed it in Maggie’s face.

Alex blinks through the water now dripping from her forehead and looks upon Maggie who’s laughing from her stomach.

“That’s it, Sawyer.” She says and lurches forward to the sink to splash Maggie with water too.

Giggling fills the room as the two of them waste water splashing one another from the tap. Tears form in their eyes from laughter as they run around the kitchen to avoid the splash that the other will threaten. 

* * *

 

Kara turns up only fifteen minutes late, to greet Winn and two women, one of which Kara assumed to be Lyra.

“I’m so sorry!” Kara exclaims as she moves to sit next to the brunette who seems overdressed for a bar in this town.

“Nah, we just ordered,” Winn says holding up his pint as if to demonstrate how little he’d drunk. The blond by his side then coughed and looked pointedly at Winn. “Right. Kara, this is Lyra,” he gestured to the blond who offered what seemed like a sarcastic smile, but Kara took as a genuine one, “and this is her friend Lena.” Winn pointed to the other woman who offers Kara an extended hand.

“My pleasure, Kara.” She says and Kara eagerly takes Lena’s hand to shake perhaps a little too quickly. The woman looks down at their hands which are still shaking a minute later, and Kara blushes as she drops her hand.

“…er sorry,” Kara repeats then to the table, “dinner ran over a little.”

Winn wafts a hand as if to dismiss her excuse, “It’s fine. How you been since we last saw you in town?”

Winn and the two women turn to stare as Kara who now feels uncomfortably on the spot, “I was here only four months ago.” She says, “I’ve been well. National City is never dull…” She trails off.

“Where about's in National City do you live?” Lena asks knocking Kara off guard.

“Central. Near CatCo?” Kara explains.

Lena nods, “I’m at L-Corp.”

“Practically neighbours.” Kara smiles and then notices Winn and Lyra staring and turns to face them again, “So how did you two meet?”

Lyra puts her arm around Winn and smiles at him.

“Funny story. I got in a spot of trouble at that club the town over, nothing I couldn’t handle but I’d had a few to drink so--,” Winn begins.

“You were sober,” Lyra interjects and all but Winn laugh. “I had to save his ass from being beating to a pulp.”

“I wouldn’t have been ‘beaten to a pulp’,” Winn emphasises.

“Just to smoothie consistency then?” Kara jokes.

Winn narrows his eyes in her direction, “Like you would have come out better.” He teases, and then to the group, “When Kara and I were in school together, not a day passed when Kara wasn’t getting into _some_ form of scrape with _someone_.”

“I was trying to help those who were being picked on.”

“Sounds very heroic,” Lena adds, making Kara blush even more.

“And in turn, you became the bullied. I can’t count the time Alex had to come pick you up from the nurses’ office.” Winn then pauses, “How the tables have turned. Now she seems to be the one getting into more drama that is usual.”

“What do you mean?” Lena asks.

“Alex’s friend, someone came asking about her the other day,” Winn tells Kara who mulls it over before dismissing her panic.

“Who?”

“Just some guy from out of town.”

“The dark-haired one who was rude to you the other day?” Lyra asks.

Winn nods.

“Did you tell him where she was?” Kara asks, worried.

“No.” Winn pauses, “What did Alex say her name was?”

“Sawyer,” Kara replies.

Winn thinks it over for a while, “That’s not what he called her. Maybe he had the wrong person.”

Kara nods, “Probably.” She tries to sound as hopeful as she isn’t. 

* * *

 

Alex and Maggie sit on the wet floor of the kitchen clutching their stomachs from laughter trying to catch their breath. It proves a feat to them as they struggle to stop laughing. Hearing one the other would soon set off into another roar of laughter that would, in turn, cause the first to begin again. This cycle went on until they formed a stitch in their sides and Maggie shivered from the cold as the wind blew against her damp clothes.

Alex calmed down enough for her eyes to fall over Maggie’s form which was now outlined by the way her clothes clung to her curves. She didn’t feel conscious of the fact that her clothes would have been exposing her in a similar way. Alex, who spent so much of her life, layering up to hide hints of curves now outlined like a silhouette. Maggie’s eyes met Alex and in silence, they sat for longer that they would have done if there wasn’t the sense of frozen time in that room. They stared into the eyes of one another feeling as though they truly saw the souls of who they were sat next to. This was another form of exposure that was more than a night spent crying, or clothes sticking to skin. This was everything. Pure essence exposed on the kitchen floor.

“You’re shivering.” Alex murmured, her voice feeling unattached to the rest of her.

Maggie nodded, “cold.” Was all she replied in a whisper. Anything louder felt like a scream into the silence that seemed already deafening to them.

Alex wishes she had more. Wished she had more confidence or self-assurance that would force her surge forward and act on what had been brewing the pit of her stomach the past week. Like butterflies that never settled long enough to let her breath sometimes.

“You should go shower.” Alex tore her eyes away, “I’ll clean up this.”

Maggie waited, for something. But there was nothing else after that, so she stood and took herself to the bathroom where she stood in the shower, the warm water flowing over her and let out her fourth tears.

Alex dried the floor feeling herself go numb from the silence. She heard the water come from the bathroom, the painful reminder of her own cowardice and felt everything inside her hush to a silence.

When all was dry, once Alex was changed and Maggie hung the towel back in the bathroom, Maggie walked to find Alex sat perched on the edge of the sofa as if unsure of whether to actually sit or not.

“How long will you stay,” Alex asks, not looking up but rather staring at her hands.

“Seven years,” Maggie answers, and Alex scoffs.

“Seven years.” She repeats, “I thought that was if you found a landsman?” She said bitterly.

“I did.” Maggie answers quietly and Alex looks up to Maggie suddenly, the faint red marks of tears still staining her cheeks.

Alex stands suddenly and moves the three steps towards Maggie and rubs her arms, “Are you dry?” She asks, she doesn’t wait for a reply before she lurches forward pressing her lips to Maggie’s. Everything crashes inside her like waves crashing rocks on the sea. Like her boat powering through a storm. Like her heart skipping a beat. Waking up after a horrific dream in a place unfamiliar to you.

Maggie pulls back momentarily to look at Alex’s face; eyes closed and astonishing. Alex opens her eyes slightly, moves the hair from Maggie’s face before their lips meet again. Moving against one another in synchronisation that neither had prepared for, but both had imagined.

Alex moves her hand to hold the back of Maggie’s head running her fingers through Maggie’s still damp hair. She feels Maggie’s smile beneath her lips and it prompts a smile from herself. How easy this feels. The cliché of puzzle pieces fall into place about her previous dissatisfaction in relationships. She’d known this woman she was no kissing only a week and already she felt herself unravel from the mere touch of.

“We should…” Alex murmurs against Maggie’s lips pulling her to the bedroom. It’s too cold in the lounge she tells herself as justification, it’s more comfortable sitting on a bed she justifies. Maggie nods, taking Alex’s hand as she’s guided through to her room. She hasn’t been in her with Alex. But she’s too distracted to take anything in other the sight of the beautiful woman now sitting on the edge of the bed in front of her.

Alex looks up, eyes pleading before gently guiding Maggie next to her and taking her head in her hands once again.

“Didn’t Kara tell you?” Maggie whispers, “When a selk makes love to a fisherwoman, she…” Alex leans forward taking Maggie’s lower lip within her own causing brain cells used to communicate to fracture, “…she weeps…” Maggie manages as Alex lays her down softly, her hair splaying out around her, “…salt tears.”


	13. Lull (noun) - a temporary interval of quiet often before chaos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry, this chapter feels a little disjointed but there were like little conversations that i wanted to include. I'm not 100% sure if the Lena/Kara plot will be focused on a great deal but we'll see i guess.   
> Also, i know recent episodes have shown that Jeremiah; not such a bang up great guy, but i guess i wanted this to work on his memory rather than as a person so i hope you still enjoy.

The pair lay, Maggie in Alex’s arms as she played her hair. Both wearing no clothes anymore as they’d become scattered across the floor of Alex’s childhood room. Both dreary with the after effects of sex as they breathe deeply.

“You said you died in the water,” Alex says combing through Maggie’s hair with her fingers, trying to unravel the knots that she had created. 

Maggie nods into Alex’s shoulder where he lays peacefully, her eyes fluttering to a close.

“How many lives do you have?” Alex then asks to fill the silence. There’s no awkwardness. There’s no tension or regret, just Alex’s wish for this moment to stretch out to eternity.

“For you?” Maggie asks and then blows a large breath, “I can’t count.”

Alex's chest flutters with what she can only describe as warmth. There’s a power to Maggie’s words, a control over Alex that she doesn’t even realise she possesses. Alex is still unsure as to whether she likes it or not.

“Maggie?” Alex says. The lights were never on, Alex sees only the faint outlines of her woman lying next to her who nods slightly, “Tell me about where you’re from.”

Maggie’s body tenses and if it were anyone but Alex she would have run from the room before her better self would have warned her. But here lay a woman who had pierced Maggie’s heart, and somehow, she couldn’t will herself to move.

“I’m from the sea.” Maggie states trying to will away the reality of her past.

“I’m serious,” Alex says.

“So am I. Maggie Sawyer was born a week ago when you fished me from the sea. Whoever went into that water died.” Maggie tries. She knows how it must sound to Alex and she half prepares to be pushed from Alex’s bed.

Instead, she’d held closer to the body of the woman who knows too little. “Whatever it is, I will understand,” Alex tells her, but Maggie fears these are promises Alex can’t keep.

Neither of them says anymore. The dark night’s cold settling in around them as they hold one another close to create their own warmth. Alex tries to ignore her nagging warning about the woman who has already come to mean as much to her as family. But she silently frets anyway, unable to silence the voices telling her to be cautious. It almost overpowers the sounds of her and Maggie sleeping. Their breathing in sync to one another. 

* * *

 

Kara comes home after midnight, drunk past the point of quiet being carried by Lena. At some point during the night, the tone had shifted from anecdotes shared over pints to shots and truth or dare. Kara, always opting for dare given her embarrassing college years of which Winn had been present for and knew far too much about. This choice meant that often her dares were to drink even more rendering her close to paralysed with intoxication before the rest could catch up. Lena, still drunk but sober enough to call a taxi and drag Kara inside.

“Which room is yours?” Lena asks pulling Kara through the hallway.

Kara giggles as she holds out her arm towards Alex’s room.

Lena yanks the door handle down sticking her head inside before quickly pulling Kara back into the hallway. “You said that was _your_ room.” Lena mumbles, trying to pull the door closed with one hand and support Kara with the other.

“It is.” Kara mumbles.

“Then why is a woman in your bed?” Lena shouts in hushed tones and she then opens the other door and drops Kara on the empty bed.

“That’s Alex, my sister.”

“And the other woman?”

Kara smiles widely covering her mouth with her hands sloppily to stifle a laugh. Then she leans forward and speaks as though she’s sharing a secret, “That’s Maaaaaaagie.” She tells her, “Alex’s selk.”

Lena rolls her eyes, smitten by the girl, arms spread out in front of her. Like a tired child refusing to let sleep take its toll.

“You gonna get into some PJs?” Lena then asks and Kara leans on her arm to face Lena looking over the top of her glasses.

“Trying to get me out of my clothes already?”

Lena laughs as she takes off Kara’s glasses and sets them on the dresser, “You should be so lucky.”

Kara nods, “No, _you_ should be so lucky.” She flops back onto her side then and seems unresponsive to anything more Lena has to say.

Lena unties Kara’s shoes, pulling them off and pushing them into the corner. She then pulls the cover from underneath Kara and lays it on top of her. Glass of water and ibuprofen placed on the dresser as well along with a note and Lena bids her farewell to an unconscious Kara.

 

Kara wakes with an unbearable headache as she reaches over, her hands touching her glasses among a glass, a pill and a piece of paper. She sits up with great difficulty, realising she’d slept in her clothes from the night before, and puts her glasses on.

_Kara,_

_Hope you don’t feel too bad in the morning, please take the tablet when you wake up and send me a text to let me know you’re alright. My number is 555 01 02._

_Lena x_

Kara manages a second to swoon at the letter before her head decides it’s time to mimic a marking band coursing through her mind and Kara must focus on just looking straight. She takes the tablet and then falls back into bed.

Across the hallway, Alex wakes up momentarily forgetting the previous night’s events. She glances to her side to find the bed empty, and the faint longing allows it all to crash into her memory. She basks in it for a while before she shrugs on a shirt and shorts and leaves the room.

Glancing in on Kara, she’s quickly shooed by an angry being inhabiting Kara’s body but with a very out of character attitude. Alex complied quickly, shutting the door before then walking into the main room to find Maggie at the stove.

Alex walks up behind her, wrapping her arms around Maggie’s waist a burying her nose into Maggie’s hair.

“Morning, Danvers.” Maggie then says turning to face Alex and pulling her in for a kiss. It’s brief, but the feeling lingers, cementing the previous night as more than just a one-night thing. Alex’s shock must play on her lips as Maggie pulls back laughing at Alex’s glazed expression. “You okay there, Danvers?” Maggie asks, “Still worn out?”

Alex takes a moment to think about it and then nods.

“Good,” Maggie replies with a chuckle. “I’m making pancakes. I assume Little Danvers is gonna want a few.”

“Kara’s zonked out. I think she had a long night.” Alex says looking into the pan on the stove which beginning to smoke. She points at it as Maggie then panics turning back to her pancakes.

“I didn’t hear her come in,” Maggie said as Alex shakes her head in agreement. “Right, you sit to the table.”

 

Kara gets out of bed to shower, get changed into her PJs and then crawls back into bed for the day. Maggie offers to stay with her while Alex goes out in her boat. The morning feels too comfortably domestic, as though she should prepare for some form of upheaval from the universe to bring her back to Earth.

Her catch is fair for the day, but she doesn’t mind. She’d overwhelmed by the thought of Maggie on all her senses. She feels her presence on the boat beside her like the lingering kiss on her lips. For a while at least she feels her father stood watching over as well. Someone who Alex hadn’t notice the absence of for a few days while she’d had Maggie on the boat. She curses herself at how fickle she seems, able to dismiss her own father because her head is turned by another. But she feels no judgment from her father on the sea, nothing but an unspoken blessing from his spirit.

“You’d like her,” Alex speaks to the sky, no doubt he’ll hear it.

She feels the response in the wind as it brushes past her ears being a cooling to her overheated face. 

* * *

 

“Morning, Alex.” Mr J’onzz says with a watchful eye. “I take it don’t need to ask what’s prompted your gleeful mood the past few days?”

Alex shakes her head, “It’s Maggie.”

J’onn nods, “The girl you men… out fishing,” he says still unsure how to phrase the whole situation.

“I drew her up in my net.” Alex nods in response now comfortable with how ludicrous it must sound.

“I saw her the other day, I have to say I was very pleased to see she seemed pretty real.”

“I was too.” Alex says, “I haven’t been so happy in a long time.”

J’onn nods, “You’re… together then?” He phrases delicately.

Alex smirks as she nods, “I think so.”

“Why does it seem like there’s something else playing on your mind then?”

Alex pauses for a second, looking down at her hands as though written on them will be her concerns. “You know the story about the king who had a secret, and it drove him mad so he told it to the tree?” Alex blurts out taking J’onn by surprise.

“Okay, so... pretend I'm a tree.”

“She brings me luck.” Alex says, “and I don't know why.” She paused before she says the next part, unsure quite how to phrase it, “I'm afraid, J’onn. Because... I'm beginning to hope.” It sounds ludicrous to her how this should be what plagues her mind, but it does.

“We should never lose hope, Alex,” J’onn says and it strikes her as oddly out of character especially considering his past.

“She drowned, J’onn. She says I brought her back to life.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” He replies, always the logical one.

“I know. None of it makes sense, that's why I'm afraid.” She pauses, “I know something's going to happen, something wonderful.” And then as her pessimism breaks through she adds, “Or terrible.”

She lets out a deep breath and looks to see J’onn nodding as if to prompt more, “And that's my secret.”

J’onn seems to take a moment to think over everything Alex has said and Alex takes a moment to reflect on it too. Then to change the subject she asks, “So what kind of tree are you, J’onn?”

“I suppose I'm an oak.”

“What wood did you use to make that old fishing boat you and Dad used to take us out on when we were kids?”

J’onn smiles at the memory. There was a deep grief within J’onn for everyone he’d lost, Alex knew it, but he hardly ever let it show in more than a faint smile at a memory, “Cedarwood.”

Alex nods, “As long as you're a tree.”

 

Outside a man stands, cigarette in his mouth watching the crowds pass as though trying to find someone. He’s unfit for this town, wearing his designer brands leaning against an expensive car. The sheer look of him makes Alex’s stomach turn.

“Hey.” He calls out after Alex as she begins to walk to Schott’s, “You Danvers?”

Alex stops and turns slowly as if to confirm that she’s being spoken to, “Yeah?”

“Danvers the Fisherwoman?” He narrows his eyes now getting a glimpse at her face. She gets the feeling that she’s not quite what he was expecting her to look like, but considering she doesn’t know him, she gives little care as to if she lives up to expectation.

“What’s it to you?” She snaps back.

His face softens slightly as if in a joke with himself, “You got a light?” He holds out the cigarette in his mouth and Alex reluctantly takes out her lighter she carries for practicalities. She lights his cigarette in the hopes that this one will kill him that little faster. “The girl on the boat.” He begins taking a long drag on the cigarette, “What do you call her?”

Alex shudders under his glance. The smell of the tobacco is stronger as he smokes it quickly.

“My mascot.” She tells him as she pockets the lighter and heads off to the store.

She asks about him in the store where Winn informs her he’s been standing by the side of the road all day doing nothing but watch. It unnerves the both to the core, Maxwell too.

What they don’t know is _who_ he is looking for as he stares out into the crowds that pass. What _he_ doesn’t know is that the one he’s looking for is sat on a couch in a seaside cabin making soup for a family she’s grown to love. He’s the one who Alex should be concerned about; the terrible that Maggie brings. She’d hoped she’d be rid of him once she’d jumped in that water, but Mon-El was someone painfully difficult to shake off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final comment for today, i just want to say from the very bottom of my heart how much i love reading all of your comments it honestly makes my day so much brighter when i receive them. You're all very kind, thank you xx


	14. dismay (noun) - concern and distress caused by something unexpected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i appologise for the delay, who knew that Uni had deadlines, right? Not sure how frequently these chapters are gonna come... will hopefully be no less than one a week but i suppose we shall see when my uni deadlines fall :D

Kara is up and sitting, staring blankly at the screen of the television when Alex arrives home. Flashing on the screen in a rerun of Friends which the sisters have both seen a hundred times over. Kara, so many times that it no longer draws laughter but instead just a large grin to her face. She’s a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and cup of hot cocoa clutched in her hands. She still looks groggy, but she’d awake and so Alex sees the improvement.

Maggie wanders from the bathroom and takes her seat by Kara watching the screen too. Maggie laughs aloud as the episode plays, probably having not seen it before. Alex’s mind wanders for a second about Maggie’s entertainment. She knows too little about where she if from to assume shows or books or even language. She knows from the fact that Maggie sung on the boat that Maggie has more than one language but Alex doesn’t know if that or another is her native language and how many others there might be. She’s proficient enough in English to speak without an accent, but Alex hasn’t any idea if this is proficiency learnt as a child or later. What about parents? What do they speak, are they still alive? Further family? Siblings? Grandparents? Exes?

Alex tries to imagine this being it. Her and Maggie living in this cabin till they’re old and grey. Till they can no longer go out upon the water, but rather sit by it watching. Tries to imagine the years that sofa will see of the two of them sat huddled against one another watching movies not yet even a concept. Living through news about people not even born yet. And though the idea is comfortable and warm, it doesn’t stick.

What happens when Maggie want to go back? Back to her family? When something happens to them or to her, what happens then? Does Alex get in touch with these strangers she doesn’t even know about the existence of?

But the questions just run through her head without opportunity for her to act upon them. She’s sure Maggie will tell her in due time if she needs to know. Surely. She has to. Right?

“Good night last night, Kara?” Alex asks causing the two women to turn and beam to her, Kara a little more groggily.

“Wonderful. I don’t quite remember the end though but W—,” Kara is quickly interrupted in her explanation.

“Little Danvers met someone.” Maggie smiles to Alex as Kara swats her with the back of her hand.

“I did not!” She exclaims.

Alex raises an eyebrow.

“Okay. Maybe I did. But nothing happened, and probably won’t. She goes bac--,” She begins and is again interrupted but by the other party in the room now.

“ _She_?” Alex asks.

“Looks like you’re not the only lady-loving-lady in the house.” Maggie winks to Kara who’s turned a bright shade of red. She pushes her glasses up her nose before trying to change the subject.

“Speaking of!” She begins, “Alex’s bed was rather full last night.”

Alex stares blankly at Kara, obviously forgetting that she would have to address this with Kara and hoping that when it came to it, she would have already have spoken about it with Maggie.

“Erm… well… we…” She stumbles over each attempt of an explanation. Maggie giggles, love stricken as she watches who she feels is possibly the most adorable person in the world try to explain their relationship. Alex looks to Maggie as a smile then creeps onto her own face. “Yeah.” She finishes.

“Well, _I_ think it’s wonderful!” Kara says quickly standing up and leaping onto Alex in a hug. Alex stumbles slightly before regaining her balance and hugging her little sister back. With Kara like a leech on Alex, she moves to the sofa where she then drops into the empty space by Maggie who then joins in the embrace.

Though the tree of them are unaware, they all share wide smiles. 

* * *

 

“Hey!” Kara says as she stands by the sink staring out to the water. “Where is everyone? There are no boats on the sea today?”

“In town for the regatta,” Alex answers absently.

“The regatta?” Maggie questions.

Alex nods, “It’s like this race on the water and the whole town goes to watch. There’s bands and street food and drinking.”

“Well, the _whole_ town isn’t there if we’re sat here.” Maggie states standing, the blanket dropping to the floor.

“I’ll go get my shoes on!” Kara shouts, already in her room.

* * *

 

The regatta for the most part in an experience. As they buy overpriced greasy food and eat it sitting on park benches sat on the waterfront watching Maxwell get the shit beaten out of him by a pillow in a fight on a boat. The pillow fighting tournament could be equated to a pissing contest with the way the men reacted to it. Each getting defensive about their losses and boasting a little too much about their winnings. Maxwell, obviously, a key contender in the game wasn’t usually happy unless he came out on top. His routine was to get so drunk beforehand he couldn’t feel the blows. It also meant that his aim was less than effective. The three girls laughed as he took a hit to the face and attempted to defective with an outstretched arm.

Maggie takes Alex’s hand as soon as she's finished and without hesitation, Alex clutches it in return. This tradition she could get very used to. Maggie’s worry of being seen diminishes, she _wants_ the entire world to know she’s in love with Alex Danvers.

“Miss Danvers.” A voice comes from behind them. Alex thinking the voice is for her even though she doesn’t recognise it, turns to come face to face with an unfamiliar woman. The women doesn’t look at her though and has her eyes fixed on the back of Kara’s head. Alex nudges Kara causing her to turn, mouth still full of food.

As she catches a glance at the woman, her eyes widen and she wipes her mouth, chewing at a superhuman rate to free her mouth, “You’ve dragged me home drunk and put me to bed, I think we’re at least on a first name basis.”

Maggie looks to Alex and the two of them share a glance of knowingness.

Lena laughs, “Well alright, Kara.”

“I thought you were heading back to National City today?” Kara asks.

“I rescheduled,” Lena says casually and Kara’s impressed by how casually she’s able to do that.

Kara catches herself fawning over the woman in front of her for a second too long before then looking to Maggie and Alex who are both amused by how coy Kara has become.

“Lena! This is my sister, Alex, and her… girlfriend, Maggie.” The label is a shock to Maggie and Alex for a second before they both look to one another to assure that the other is okay. When they realise that their thoughts had gone in the same direction they diminish any worry.

“Nice to meet you,” Lena says and shakes both of their hand in turn. “I’ll be seeing you around, Kara,” Lena says and then turns.

Kara looks to Maggie and Alex as though to plead with them to let her go.

“Go!” They both say as Kara beams and then runs after Lena to enjoy the regatta together.

The afternoon chill settles in around Maggie and Alex, and their single layered shirts are doing little to protect them from it. They try to huddle together for warmth but the breeze blows between them and they can’t help but shiver.

“Do you want to go watch the band?” Alex asks, “I think it’d be warmer in the crowd.”

With teeth chattering, Maggie nods appreciatively.

They walk, arm in arm down the pathway to the open square where up on the stage is Winn’s local band performing a number that Alex has heard one too many times through the shop’s speakers. Kid’s got a great voice, but he sure does like to overplay it. Alex had been right when she said the crown was warmer and after feeling comfortably warm Alex leans over to Maggie’s ear and says, “I’m going to go get us drinks. You wait here?”

Maggie, not even attempting to overpower the band just nods to Alex and smiles. Though once Alex has moves Maggie looks to her surrounding enjoying the atmosphere when a face catches her.

Heart rate increasing, hearing the blood in her ears, dry tongue, sweaty palms. Mon-El stands at the edge of the crowd, his eyes fixed on the band happily. Maggie panics, knowing she can’t let him see her. She gradually pushes against the crowd to exit the other side of it, looking back to see is he’s still stood in his position. He doesn’t notice, and she thanks the god she doesn’t believe in for it. He’s too preoccupied to look for her in the crowd.

How long had he been in town? Had he been looking for her? Of course, he had, there was no other reason for him to _be_ in this town. The small town known for nothing except its fishing industry and Mon-El she knew for a fact hated fish. He hated water, which was why she had used it to escape from him. But now, as she found herself on land again, stable and secure he makes his appearance to upset the balance.

Why couldn’t the universe let her have this? After all, she had suffered at the hands of Mon-El in attempt to please her parents was she not due her happiness. It dangles a life in front of her, a life with Alex that she clings to with fingertips and then it pulls it all ways.

Maggie, ignoring Alex’s request, runs from the crowds, away from the town centre and out of sight from everyone.


	15. Distress (verb) - to cause (someone) anxiety, sorrow, or pain

“Maggie!?” Alex called over the crowd, though her voice failed to reach much further than those immediately in front of her. If Maggie wasn’t in the place Alex had left she knew she’d have left on purpose. Run off, run _from_ something. And Alex’s mind jumped to the conclusion it was from Alex herself. She cursed herself for how quickly she’d allowed herself to get comfortable with it. How she’d expected Maggie to too.

She scanned the crowd and couldn’t see her. She climbed atop a table trying to look over the mass of people all in their own worlds. A man at the far edge had his eyes fixed on Alex, the man with the cigarette. Alex wasted little time on him, her mind somewhere far more important.

She abandoned the music and rushed down to the sea front and down the path to her house. She knew there were few places in town that Maggie knew well enough to escape to them. If she wanted to feel safe she’d head to familiar water. Water she’d been lying in since she’d come to live with Alex.

“Maggie!?” Alex called as she ran home, her lungs burning from the strain. Her heart thumping from worry. Alex had only felt this worry a handful of times in her life, all relating to her family in some way. When her father got ill, when she got the call from the hospital about her mother, and when Kara went missing when they were both young teens. Only one of those had turned out well, and Alex didn’t like those statistics. It was only family that could make Alex worry to the point of her legs disappearing underneath her. Her family, and Maggie.

By the house, on the edge of the sea lay a small alcove, dark and damp inside. Alex had often gone to sit in it when she needed her own space. When her parents were being too overbearing or Kara was just a little too sunny for Alex to deal with. You could see across the entire seafront of the town from the edge of the alcove. Once you got used to the chill as the wind roared round the walls of the alcove echoing in her ears and used to the sharp stones that bit into your bum as you tried to sit, there was nowhere better.

Alex walked to the mouth of the rock and peered inside to find Maggie crouching, her knees tucked into her chest staring out in front of her, worry plaguing her beautiful features.

“Don’t I get seven years?” Alex asks pulling herself up and crouching on the opposite wall, knee to knee with Maggie who stares at her with what looks like pity. Pity that Alex could still hope for those years that now seemed like false hope to Maggie.

“Remember the bit about the selkie man?” Maggie asks, the quivering in the voice echoing off the walls like waves that crash over Alex, unable to keep her head above the noise.

“The husband?” Alex questions, wondering why she’d deal with such fairy-tales at a time like this.

Maggie nods, “He’s here.”

The statement was lost into the alcove. It didn’t echo off the walls, it had been spoken too quietly. Yet it deafened Alex, “And he’s taking her back?” Her voice manages but it doesn’t feel like her own.

“Yes,” Maggie answers, looking away from the pain on Alex’s face. She can’t bear to look at the hurt she causes. The devastation she leaves where she walks. Through towns left in ruins, through people who she can’t forget. Alex is more than one of those. She’s not someone who rests in the mind, not a memory who will appear at the beck and call of a trigger. She’s part of Maggie, she sits on her soul and blows life into her each time she breathes. What she leaves behind is not a person, it’s a soulmate. 

* * *

 

Mon-El peers over the town from what high point he can find, looking over the festivities for the one who left him. The one who ruined him, who abandoned him. But his eyes can only scan so far and the town is too big to see over from a single point.

He takes himself to the live music because even if she doesn’t stop, she’ll pass through. He knows enough about small towns to know the protocol. They all walk like cattle, following one spot of warmth to the next, drunken and foolish. She stands to the edge, near one of the entrances and watches the cars that drive past him, occasionally considering the crowd to see if she’d arrived.

He finds that the music is just noise to him. Nothing like where he’s from where skill is required to play to large audiences. As he looks to the crowd for the last time he looks up to see his woman’s new fool standing on a table calling out. Her brows knit together in concern. He knows it’s about _her_. Stands before him is someone else fallen victim to her spell.

But by the time he’s fought his way through the crowd to the woman she’s gone and he can’t work out which way.

* * *

 

“Tell him to piss off.” Alex suggests weakly, trying to find the humour in herself but it seems empty.

“I wish I could.”

And as if it were that easy, Alex states, “wish, then.”

“I can’t.” Maggie smiles weakly as someone who seemed to hold so much hope for her.

“You can grant a wish. Kara said so.” Alex knows she’s clutching at straws of a fantasy, but it comes from truth somewhere down the line of history. Wishing it gives you the belief enough to fight for what you desire. Right? She knows it’s flawed logic, but it’s all she’d got.

“Okay. I wish all your worries were gone.” Maggie states looking into Alex’s eye, damp from tears.

“So do I. And I wish you’d stay.”

“That’s two wishes.” Maggie smiles. Even in hypothetical situations, she asks for too much. She hopes too much.

“One for you. And one for me.”

* * *

 

It takes little time before Kara and Lena have walked most of town side by side, paying little attention to their surrounds enough to notice anything other than the fact that they’ve been here before. And yet, though they know it’s nearing on morning and Lena has a meeting tomorrow that she must drive to, they both make excuses to prolong the night. Kara’s excuses more transparent than Lena’s who smiles at Kara completely smitten. As their shoulders touch, they walk along the same pavement for the third time, smiling to themselves at what feels like an infinite night.

* * *

 

Driving in a panic around the town, Mon-El leans forward against his steering wheel to try to see everything in front of him. He’s not used to driving, Maggie had been the one to drive them around, there had been little use for him to learn. But desperate times called for desperate measures and after a speedy self-taught lesson, he’s gained enough knowledge to carry himself around. Once Maggie was back with him, he’d dispose of the useless knowledge. He just had to find her first.

* * *

 

Leaning out of their own car, Maxwell and the rest of his drunken friends howled along to the car radio, oblivious to their surroundings and to the road. Maxwell behind the wheel, looking into the back seat more often than he should have to check he missed out on no jokes. His eyes, glazed over from the alcohol as he tried to focus on the road ahead of him.

* * *

 

“Maybe I can’t grant wishes.” Maggie suggests.

“Maybe you walked into the sea to get away from a bad relationship,” Alex adds.

“Would you believe that?”

“I did it once. Walked out into the sea to try and escape it all.”

“What happened?” Maggie asks.

“I got wet.”

Maggie considers Alex for a second, wondering if there’s a part of Alex that would understand it all. More than just the relationship she walked away from, but the entire world. The voice inside her head screams that she wouldn’t, that only he who had lived it all with her would ever understand. But her heart spoke different words, softer and nicer words that held a better promise.

They sit in silence for a while, Alex wondering where that promise of seven years seemed to go in such a short space of time, and Maggie wondering how to get them back.

Screaming interrupts their peace. In the distance from the town that’s now lit with more than festivities. The ambient music has ceased, the mood has turned sombre and the sound of distant ambulances now litter the air.

“Something’s up,” Alex says, pulling herself from the alcove and casing up the pathway, following the sound of cries with Maggie following closely in tow.

The general consensus from those who leave the scene detail a crash and look upon Alex with sad eyes.

They reach a crossroad.

Two cars had met head on, neither with lights on, on a crossing. Alex can make out both cars, one belonging to the man with the cigarette, the other belonging to Maxwell. She feels a distant feeling of pity for both drivers before she sees the remaining bodies lying in the road.

“No.” Alex breaths picking up speed, “No!” She yells pushing past the police who line the scene. “Kara!” She screams noticing the coat now spattered with blood, the blind hair lying on the wet ground, “Get out of my way!” Alex cries out, as she’s pulled back by her jacket. “Kara!” She slips out of it lurching forward upon her sister who’s hand in hand with another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Kara will be okay...)


	16. Consternation (noun) - a feeling of anxiety or dismay, typically at something unexpected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait :) We're really near the end now, i promise

Much to the paramedic’s displeasure, Alex and Maggie rode to the hospital by Kara’s side. Alex never letting go of Kara’s hand, Maggie never letting go of Alex’s. Over Kara’s face, they’d fixed an air mask, where the seal trapped blood around the rim. They could do little in the back of the ambulance with the limited space, but they tried. They had her strapped to a gurney, head in bandages, chest examined but everything skipped Alex’s notice. Her years at med school seemed a waste to her then when she was unable to help the one person she needed to save.

“You need to check for brain injury.” She demanded to the paramedic who looked at her with pitiful eyes. Alex’s tears stained her cheeks preventing her ability to see far in front of her other than as if it were through water.

“We will when we get to the hospital.” The paramedic tells her, laying a hand on Alex’s shoulder to comfort her.

“But it might… be too… too…,” The last word doesn’t come as she looks down at the struggling body of her sister, her only family left. The one who never left Alex even though she felt like she deserved it often. She choked on her breath, unable to regulate her in and out breaths.

Maggie squeezes harder in her hand and puts her other arm around Alex, holding her while she shakes and cries. “They’re going to save her,” Maggie assures her.

“You don’t know that.” Alex replies with biting words, “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.” She spits and though Maggie knows that the words come from a place of panic, they still cut deep.  

Alex pulls away from Maggie, placing her forehead against the bandages on Kara’s and lets the tears fall onto her cheek. “I’m so sorry, Kara. For everything.”

If Kara had been able to speak she would have assured Alex that there was nothing, in this world or any other that Alex would have to apologise for. Other, that is, then always taking all of the red skittles in the packet. But of course, these thoughts remained in Kara’s head which throbbed as the ambulance drove over each speed bump. She slipped in and out of consciousness but each time she came to, there was Alex still holding her and trying to will the motion back into her. 

* * *

 

The ambulance arrived after what had only been ten minutes but seemed like centuries. Alex and Maggie followed as the gurney was wheeled through the halls of the hospital, vaguely ill patients watching in horror as the body of a young girl was rushed to the operating room followed by two women, one past hysterics.

They were told to wait behind the line. The one painted on the floor that acted as the boundary of all knowledge. Behind that line, Alex was now out of knowing what state her sister was in.

They waited, they sat and listened as a young doctor occasionally came out to inform them on her progress. After the second time of coming to introduce himself they assured him they knew his name by now and thanked him for keeping them updated.

“Alex, she _will_ be okay. Dr Olsen is sure of it.” Maggie tries, Alex has finally let her be held again.

“You don’t understand, I did this?” Alex says.

“You? You were nowhere near?”

“I said I wanted all my worries to disappear. And no one causes me worry as Kara does.” Alex explains, the sob in the chest rising, threatening to make a scene.

“Alex.” Maggie says sternly, and when Alex refuses to raise her head, Maggie takes it in her hands looking at Alex deep in the eyes, “This isn’t your fault. At all.”

Alex nods, burying her head in Maggie’s chest, wetting the fabric with her tears.

“Alex?” A voice came from across the waiting room. Lifting her head from her hands, Alex looked up and there stood Lena, arm in a sling, a bandage around her arm and clothes stained with blood; Kara’s blood.

“You… you…,” Alex chokes, but she can’t form it.

“You’re okay?” Maggie asks as Alex nods.

Lena nods guiltily, “I didn’t even see the cars coming. They were so fast.” Lena tries, her own emotions getting the better of her in parts, “Kara did, though. She saw them and she pushed me out of the way, but…” She stops.

“She was caught in the crash.” Alex finished for her. Lena nods, looking down at the floor as if waiting for her punishment.

Instead, she’s greeted by a pair of arms that wrap themselves around her shoulders. She's taken back by the contact but allows herself to be comforted by it. Alex pulls back eventually, sniffling and going to sit back, gesturing for Lena to join them in wait.

They wait for another hour or more before Dr Olsen makes another appearance, a smile beaming on his face. The three women stand in wait, “She’s okay. She’s gonna be just fine.” He tells them as Alex almost collapses onto the floor. Maggie holds her, her own smile uncontrollable. Lena’s silent, but tears of sheer joy flow down her face with thanks.

“She was in a critical state when we got her in, her liver had been severely damaged by the impact but luckily for her, a compatible donor was brought in at the same time as she was.” Dr Olsen explains, looking around the waiting room as though to try and spot the family of the donor.

“One of the drivers?” Lena asks to which Olsen nods.

“Mr Maxwell Lord.” He says as the Lord family seemed to be being told at the same time what has happened to Maxwell. They break down in grief and though Alex is selfishly thankful it turned out this way round, she’s sympathetic to the family. Though Maxwell was an arse, he didn’t deserve to die this way.  

“When can we see her?” Maggie asks eagerly.

“The anaesthetic will be wearing off any second. I can take you to her room if you like?” Dr Olsen offers, gesturing down the hallways.

Alex takes the lead with Dr Olsen, almost running the hallway. Maggie follows behind, thrill filling her until she passes a door to supply cupboard, inside being met by the sight Mon-El.


	17. haunt (verb) - to continue to cause problems for a person for a long time even after departure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a real short one, so that's why it's so quick

She contemplates for a moment whether to keep walking, to go see Kara and not mention to anyone the sight of him. But she knows she can’t keep running from him. Not after he’s gotten this close. There’s only so long you can hide within the same town before someone else gets hurt in the crossfire.

Laying a hand on the doorknob, it burns into her palm with the choice she’s about to make. She watches Alex and Lena disappear down the hallway and twists it slowly.

“Why are you here?” She spits at him.

Shocked he stands there, his own injuries raw and smiling at her. His head’s been cut open, bruises litter his arms and neck. She can’t say she’s sorry about it, but there is an aspect of her that hurts as she sees them. The time she’d spent with him, nurturing his wounds only to have him inflict the similar ones on her. Pavlov was right with his theory of association. From the mere sight of his wounds, she braces herself from the pain.

“You speak their language now?” He asks as though it was not once his own too. Back from before he’d run away from this country before he’d been thrown out and found his way to hers.

“It’s softer than ours.” She says, and she’d not sure if it’s the entire language or just her experience with it. With it being whispered into the moonlight in kisses against her collarbone. In contrast to the shouted abuse in her language she’d known her whole life, English seemed like a dream.

“I wished you were dead.” He scowls at her.

She smiles, “Funny, I had the same wish about you.”

“The sea spat you out, did it?” He questions, “It can swallow you again. You don’t belong here, do you?” The words should wash over her like water, but they seem to stick and bite like sand. She knows that the land she walks on is not her own, that she’s a stranger to it, but she has never felt a sense of belonging as she does inside that house by the sea.

“Is that a threat?” She tries but he doesn’t rise to it, “Just go back to your home.” She tells him, not hers any longer. Hers, she’s comes to realise, is not a country or a house but lies in the arms of someone else.

“I can’t.” He explains clenching his jaw, “Police want to talk to me.”

“About what?” Her mind goes immediately to the list of possibilities.

“He came from nowhere. Drunk. She stepped in the way.” He explained and it sunk in now that of course, he’d have been half the responsibility for Kara’s injuries. Because anyone she got close to was a direct risk to Mon-El’s curse.

“He’s dead,” Maggie tells him, and though there’s the look of new information registering with him, there’s no empathy. There had never been. Mon-El was out for number one; himself. Always and forever would he be at the top of his own hierarchy, she only hoped this got him killed before it did anyone else.

“They should go speak to those idiots who were in the car with him.” Mon-El spits.

“Go tell them that.” She narrows her eyes, reaching for the doorknob behind her.

“I will,” He notices her hand turn the handle and begin to pull. He slams it closed, placing on hand by her head to keep it close and grabbing her arm with the other. She feels the hand shapes bruises form. She’s used to them by now, to know when they come, to know what colour they will be. “And then you’ll tell me.”

“I’m not telling you shit.” She bites before swatting his hands away and rushing into the hallways. He could, but he won’t grab her here. He won’t make a scene. It’s not his style.

* * *

 

Kara’s body lies frail under the pale thin blanket. Clean bandages wrapped around her, pristine white and hiding all sense of injury. Her eyes flutter open as Alex and Lena walk in, Dr Olsen leaving them alone.

Alex approaches, stroking Kara’s hand softly more to assure herself that her sister was here, in her grasp and this wasn’t a wishful dream.

“Hey,” Alex says, herself looking more of a mess than Kara. Kara’s clothes had been cut away and discarded, Alex’s were now stained too, but she didn’t notice the stiffness of her clothes as Kara smiled at her.

“Hello, you.” She says, struggling to keep her eyes open. “Where are the drivers?”

“One was Maxwell, he… died.” Alex explains.

Kara closes her eyes and turns her head to take a moment. She was impossible of feeling anything other than concern. No hatred for what he had done, only pain for him and his family’s loss.

“And the other one?”

“We… don’t know.” Alex then says.

“Lena?” Kara asks the figure who has been standing in the background since they’d walked into the room. Too tall to be Maggie.

Lena, realising her name had been called stand attentive and rushes over to Kara to take her hand. “I’m so sorry.” She says, pressing kisses against Kara’s hands.

Alex watches, warmed by the scene, by her sister’s happiness.

“Shhhh.” Kara begs, “It’s no one’s fault.” She says. She then looks to Alex, “Where’s Maggie?”

“She’s close by,” Alex says, unsure of her girlfriend’s whereabouts exactly, sure that she’s hung back a little to gather her thoughts. “You’ll see her soon. Just rest.”

Kara nods, and Lena and Alex settle into chairs by her side contempt.

When Maggie enters moment later, panic colouring her face a pale green, Alex rushes to her, “You okay?” She asks trying to find what ails her and take it away.

Maggie nods, lying, but unable to tell the truth, “I’m perfect.”


	18. contrition (noun) - the state of feeling remorseful and penitent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell i'm procrastinating my essays?

They held Maxwell’s funeral on the old pier which had led to his family’s boat. It was a glossed thing, cared for and painted annually. Alex, whenever seeing it, even as she stood there watching Tycho pouring his ashes into the sea, felt sick at the pomposity of it all. Fishing was not a glamorous business no matter how much money you threw at it, or how much paint you gave it. It rained in true pathetic fallacy, and though Alex kept her expression occasion appropriate, inside she giggled. Only the weather could have its last say over Maxwell. He wouldn’t have allowed anyone on Earth to have had it, it had to have been some higher power.

And so, as the sky cried over the loss of what the other more corporal mourners said was such an innocent man, Alex stood, letting the water wash over her like she had with all the words he had spat at her over the years. She wished death on no one, hot a soul could be said to deserve such a punishment as that, but any punishment seemed rather karmic. It amused her, the words they had to say. How they could spin lies with such confidence. She hadn’t wanted them to be cruel, only truthful. But perhaps there was only cruelty. It seemed impossible that even at a funeral there could be nothing truthfully kind to say about a person.

He’d been kind once before the money became his leverage and his skeleton key into the world. When they were at school, as children she recalled them bonding over their shared love of science and need to understand the way things ticked, consequently they shared the cruelty of the other children due to this fascination. When she’d sit, school shirt stain with her lunch that the kids had thrown at her, he too would sit across the classroom with matching stains and a knowing glance would pass between them.

But then came high school.

Interests became little when the only thing that played on the kids’ minds seemed to be the opposite sex. For Alex, this came as another form of ridicule. She didn’t know how to interact with them in the way that was required. She could talk to them at great length about similar interests, but this seemed to push her even further from the dating prospect. She became less of a compatible girl as she’d hoped and simply became one of the guys, a friend and wingman. For Maxwell, he excelled. He approached the situation then as he would go on to apply to nearly all situations; by holding his head high and feeling entitled to it.

Alex had never felt entitled to anything in her life. She worked for each of her rewards till it caused blisters on her fingers. Each event felt like a direct reward or consequence to her. Positive or negative, it was all her.

Once she returned home to reap what seemed like a punishment of leaving; an empty house filled with grief, Maxwell had perfect his skill in pride only his next target seemed to be Alex. Flattered initially by his advanced she accepted, flirting with the idea of a future with him, he made each attempt to ‘woo’ her. Her little experience in the area had made her naïve. She believed him when he said he cared for her. When he said he wanted a life together. When he said he loved her. She should have known from the taste of the words on her tongue, how sour they tasted, that he’d been lying. Perhaps even he hadn’t known it then, but he didn’t need to think about it. He could spin these words as though they didn’t mean anything because to him they didn’t. To Alex, they meant losing another part of herself to someone else she thought she cared about.

She’d left Maggie at home when she’d come. Couldn’t bare the idea of having her attend the funeral to someone who she’d never known. Didn’t want Maxwell to seem in any way decent to unknowing ears.

Winn stood in the distance, but with his brother and mother to which Maxwell could have stood next to the saints at the gates of heavens. She didn’t go to talk to him, couldn’t handle what Anton would have had to say to her. Not today.

The wake took place at the local bar where she’d stopped drinking not long after she’d started. Constantly filled with the aroma of masculinity she would have found better company at her house in a bottle of bourbon. Today was different, today it was filled with sorrow, and she would stomach that better.

Tycho stood to the bar, gesturing Alex over next to him. “Two whisky’s, Ondine.” He said to the woman behind the bar. Already drunk from before the ceremony, he hung his head in her direction.

“I’m not drinking,” Alex told him sternly, but he wafted way her words as though it was a bad smell and pushed the glass towards her.

“It’s his wake. Drink to him.” He slurs.

“He was nothing to me except a doorstop in the Schott store.” She tells him.

“He was once more than that, we both know it.”

“I was younger then. I grew up.”

Tycho mumbles to himself, putting the glass in Alex’s hand and then clicking his own against hers. He takes it back in one swig of the glass, it doesn’t even affect him anymore, probably doesn’t even taste of anything. But Alex can’t criticise considering how little it does to her either. Years of drinking herself to sleep at night when the criticisms from her head seem to become too much.

“Get rid of her, Alex,” Tycho tells her as though a wise man only in the body of a wasted man.

“Who?”

“Your water baby.” She repeats Maxwell’s words sadly. As though he’d never really left her at all. And perhaps he wouldn’t. He’d continue to plague her until the day she passed herself, and then he’d plague her into the afterlife. “She brings you good luck,” He begins, and Alex knows he’s talking about more than the increased catch, “then bad.” He finished.

Alex throws her own drink back, feeling nothing from it. She knows there is no correlation between Kara’s accident and Maggie. She knows there is nothing to link the crash to the appearance of a woman who was miles away. But there’s something inside Alex that reasons it’s _her_. Her own happiness that links the two. As though for her to be happy for one moment will directly cause pain a second later. A cosmic balance that seemed to make Alex’s life nothing but constant pain and sadness with spurts of happiness she would later regret.

One drink becomes another and another until she calls it. Bottle in hand, she stumbles from the pub and wanders down the path on route home, slowly but surely. Perhaps if she’d been sober she would have noticed the eyes that fell on her as she stumbled. One pair of eyes in particular belonging to an angry man seeking out answers which lay in the mind of a girl this drunken one was protecting. She may have even noticed as the eyes followed her the entire way home, finally finding that information he wanted, the location of his once beloved.

Maggie had taken residence in the boat, below the deck, a blanket covering her she sat peacefully with only a lamp for light. She couldn’t bear to sleep inside the house without Alex, and without knowing when she’d be back she took the boat as a bed for the night. It wasn’t safe to be inside, Maggie knew that. Not when she knew Mon-El was out there trying to find her ay any possible cost.

Clambering on board, Alex stumbled across the moving deck and lifts the door with a carelessly strong tug. Maggie looks up, taking in a breath of shock for a second before smiling at the sight of Alex. Alex who was currently looking at her in a way that Maggie wished to disintegrate in. Such harsh eyes that didn’t seem to be able to focus, furrowed brows, and pursed lips. This was not an expression Maggie had seen before, and not one she ever wished to see again.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” She asks, trying to break Alex’s angry with a smile. But the attempt falls short.

“Because you’re a selkie… and I’m drunk.” Alex answers, pained by her own statement, “A peaceful night’s sleep, had you?”

“No.” Maggie says, no care of tone in her voice, doubtful Alex would have been able to pick up on it at all, “He’s still out there somewhere.” She shares. She wants the comfort that would have come from a sober Alex. The one who had comforted her before when she wasn’t aware of what she was trying to soothe. But there is nothing. There is calculation and pain behind those eyes.

“Okay. I’m taking you home.” Alex says and though Maggie reaches out to be taken to the house she had grown to know as home, Alex lets the door drop and moves to the wheel of the boat. Not _their_ home. _Her_ home. Or the home that Alex knows. The sea.

“Hey!” Maggie calls, pushing from her nook and climbing onto deck following closely behind Alex.

“That bit about the husband…,” Alex begins, but she’d speaking so slowly that to interject is less than a task.

“He’s not my husband.” Maggie clarifies now, the term having grown too sharp for her ears to take. Now is not the time for fairy tale talk, Alex deserves the truth, but now she fears it’s too late.

“What is he, then?”

“Mia menzogna.” Maggie says, tears burning in her eyes.

“What’s that? Selkie for pimp?” It amuses Maggie how similar those words actually are. Menzogna, mezzano. But so far from one another in truth.

She barely notices when the boat lurches at the impact from the peer. Drunk, Alex has less care, less consideration, or perhaps just less coordination. “Look.” She says gesturing wide to the barren island they find themselves upon, “Your home. You’ll be safe here.” Alex takes another smaller bottle from her jacket pocket and de-caps it with her teeth, spitting the lip the side. Maggie grimaces at the sight of such pain. “You can sing your song.”

“Who will I sing it to?” Maggie asks, trying to keep her expression hard and controlled, but the tears threaten to expose her.

“To me.” Alex says, “Go on, sing.”

“I can’t.”

Alex almost laughs, “Why not?”

“Because you’re drunk.”

“I’ll be sober in the morning. You can sing to me then.” Alex says, but not daring to look Maggie in the eye. She knows broken promises, the know the sting of a plan unfulfilled, and here she was promising as little as morning she wouldn’t get because she could.

Alex clambers off the boat as gracefully as she had gotten onto it. Tripping over her own feet, she spills half the bottle straight into the ocean and Maggie can feel nothing but thanks for it. She rushed to Alex’s side to ensure that she herself didn’t soon follow. She knew Alex was a competent swimmer, but that was sober Alex. This was someone else.

Alex slips to her knees, scraping the palm of her hand on the gravel. She hardly feels it, only notices when Maggie grabs her hand and cups water with her other hand to wash the blood away. Alex tries to watch with flickering vision.

“I fished around here for years.” Alex tells Maggie though pointing her face towards the sea as though telling the great expanse of water instead, “Never knew this selkie stuff.”

She takes a moment of thought, “Maybe you _were_ dead. And I fished you back to life.” She laughs to herself as the absurdity, yet here she was buying into the story of selkie women.

“Yes.” Maggie said.

“And now you’re going to haunt me?” Alex takes another drink, “Forever.” She laughs. That promise again. Treated as a threat now.

“What does haunt mean?” Maggie asks noting the way Alex speaks it as though it were poison on her tongue.

Alex doesn’t answer, she repeats it quieter, “What does haunt mean?”

Again, a reminder to Alex that Maggie and she really were different. From different backgrounds, from different worlds. A language barrier between them she had hoped she could broach. But she wasn’t strong enough for that. Not strong enough to fight for it. Not strong enough for any of this.

They sit, hit to hip of the steps of the island. It had been used for storage in years past, now abandoned leaving nothing but the rock skeleton of rooms filled with history. No one came here, except the occasional family in the summer, who only came once.

Alex holds out the bottle she’s almost finished to Maggie, “You want some?”

Maggie shakes her head, curling her lip to the pungent smell of it on Alex’s breath.

“Selkies don’t drink?” She laughs to herself, emptying the bottle before leaving it on the step. “You’ll be safe here.” She then says and stands, slowly.

“How’s Kara?” Maggie asks, thinking Alex to only be stretching her legs.

“She’s fine. She’s safe too.” Alex then says and begins to walk back to the Sawyer.

“Alex. What does ‘haunt’ mean?” Maggie asks one final time, staring out at the waves.

“It means what you’re doing… to me.” Alex shouts back as she takes a step onto the deck of her boat.

Maggie, now realising how distant Alex’s voice has become, turns to find her out of sight. “You wouldn’t.” She tells herself. Trying to assure herself that Alex’s doubt hadn’t run _that_ deep. But then she hears the sound of the boat being pushed against the rock and she sprints to the sound yelling Alex’s name at the top of her lungs.

She stands on the edge, the boat out of reach but within hearing. “What are you doing?” she cries out.

“I know it’s not how fairy tales end. But this one does.” She looks back, greeted by the sight of pure regret. “This one does because it has to.” She lies to herself.

“What do you mean?” Maggie asks, and then once Alex doesn’t answer, shouting with all her breath, “What do you mean!?”

“I mean your kind and my kind, we don’t belong together,” Alex says to herself, trying to stop the flood of tears that rub her cheeks raw.

“I have to say goodbye!” Maggie calls.

Alex turns, letting the boat cut the waves without her aid and bites the inside of her cheek to try and control the pain in her chest. “Goodbye.”

“…to Kara.”

There’s a pain of watching the one you love become nothing upon the horizon. It’s hard to tell at which point exactly they stop being the person you love and just simply that dot. Because, though you leave the body there, the person will follow you as far as you travel. To the land, for Alex is nothing of distance, and simultaneously half a world. She hears the voice within her head, the pleading and her own regret. She doesn’t look back again, but she also feels that without Maggie, she can never look forward.


	19. disinter (verb) - to discover something that is well hidden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops... i kinda haven't posted in a while... sorry... i've been at home and kinda slacking. I still hope you enjoy this...

Up in a tree, Alex found herself the following morning. Lodged between the trunk and a branch, sleeping. It was J’onn who walked past and found the girl sitting there looking uncomfortably peaceful. The bottle had been thrown to the floor, or likely dropped as Alex’s hand hung above it.

“Alexandra.” He calls up.

Her eyes flicker open as she groggily manoeuvred herself to a less painful position.

“Hey, buddy,” Alex calls back down. She squints, the sun proving a little too much for her right now.

“Oh, I’m your buddy, am I?” There’s an element of fatherly concern within J’onn but he consciously makes the effort to appear distant. This was her mess, whatever it was she was doing, and it wasn’t his place to get directly involved. Regardless, he wasn’t about to leave her stuck up a tree in her state.

“Yeah. You are.” Alex groans as she pushes up from the trunk she’s stuck behind. “You’re my sobriety buddy.”

J’onn rolls his eyes.

“Where were you last night? I needed you?” The memories from last night flooded back to her with more impact than the headache she was currently suffering from. The image and phantom voice in her head of Maggie crying out in desperation.

“You took it a bit far last night?” J’onn asks knowing his answer already but making sure the reality of the extent of her screw up was apparent to her as well.

She nods, “Big time. I was flying high as a f--,” she pauses, “a _flipping_ kite, and now I’ve crash landed into the dirt.”

“And how’s it taste?” J’onn asks.

Alex thinks about it for a while, actually considering the foul aftertaste in her mouth, “Like shite.”

Finally, after managing to hoist her left leg over the branch, she pushes off and falls to the ground at J’onn’s feet flat on her face.

“You know what my problem is, J’onn?” Alex asks as she takes a moment lying in the grass before pushing up to her feet.

“You can’t stick a landing?” J’onn jokes, and then off Alex’s disapproving look, “You’re problem is you can’t take good luck.”

Alex, rubbing her head with on hand and pointing at J’onn with the other, nods.

“Bingo.”

“Misery is easy, Alex.” Alex now waves her hand in his direction trying to get him to stop. He doesn’t however, “Happiness you have to work at.”

Alex scoffs, “Aren’t you supposed to be a tree? That’s awfully large advice for a tree to give. “

J’onn nods, “Well, I’m a special kind of tree.” He pauses, and as Alex begins to limp away, her foot numb from the night. “What about the girl?”

Obviously a touchy subject for Alex she spares the answer no second thought, “She’s gone.”

“And Kara?”

“She’s getting out today.” Yet another thing on Alex’s list of things to do. Having to explain how a rash decision had resulted in such chaos was not going to be entertaining for either party involved. “I’m taking her home. After that there are no excuses, is there, J’onn?”

J’onn follows Alex, taking her arm as support as she hobbles the rocky pathway home, “No.” 

* * *

 

Kara, supposedly still in recovery, sat on the couch, eating her way through her second tub of ice cream. She seemed content as Alex was anything but. She was more than happy to have her sister home with her, even if it was still only temporary, it was no surprise that her mind often took fleeting trips elsewhere.

“Why are you crying?” Kara asks, staring at Alex who stands to the country cutting up potatoes for their dinner.

“I’m not.” Alex lies, wiping away the stray tear that falls past her cheek.

“Yes, you are. I can tell.” Kara says.

“Maybe because you’re home again and I’m so happy.”

Kara sighs, realising that a truthful answer might a be a bit too much to ask for right now. Perhaps through no fault from Alex, Kara knows that Alex’s emotions are foreign to herself more than anyone.

“Where’s Maggie?”

Alex pauses. Kara can see as Alex clutches the knife that little bit harder as a channel to her pain. “She’s had to go away for a while.”

“That’s why you’re crying.”

“It’s not, I swear.”

“Alex, I’m not a child.”

Alex grits her teeth, hard.

“Is she coming back?”

Alex ignores the question like she ignored the empty feeling it provokes in her stomach. This bottomless pit she’s dug herself. And all she seems to be able to do is find the shovel to make it deeper. “You want chicken or beef for dinner?” Alex asks, changing the subject.

Kara rolls her eyes, “Chicken.”

Kara continues flicking through the channels trying to find something that will keep her occupied until Alex joins her or until dinner is ready, whichever come first. The music channels provide little amusements either as Alex’s TV only gets the basic channels and basic means no pop music.

She’s ventured into the land of foreign music then she hears the knife clatter against the surface behind her and Alex come running over to behind the sofa. They both stare at the screen, now playing a jazz hit from the 40s.

“That song.” Alex breathes.

“Which song?” Kara asks handing the remote to Alex.

“Just a minute ago.” And suddenly the channel flick backwards until they stop on one specific ‘Italian Charts’ programme.

The music plays from it, at a quicker pace than Alex is familiar but the tune is still the same, the words of which fall foreign to her ears still ring familiarity that’s hard to shake or cause anything but peace in her heart. “Ma in un modo ao in un altro Sperarlo nel mentre…,”

“It’s real.” Alex breathes to herself though obviously in the hearing of Kara.

“Course it’s real. It’s…,” Kara looks for the singer, “…Marco Mengoni? You heard of him?”

Alex shakes her head, “I’ll call Lena, ask her to come keep you company.”

“Lena is back in National City. Why?” Kara asks, not opposed to the idea, just unsure why Alex’s sudden urgency.

“I need to just go somewhere.”

“I’m okay to be left alone, Alex.”

Alex looks over Kara in her state of just having gotten out of the hospital. “Are you sure?”

“Yes! Don’t you have some unfinished lady business?”

Alex blushes under the eyes of her sister, “I suppose.” She says indignantly.

“Go on, then.” 

* * *

 

Urgency filled Alex’s every nerve and muscle as she pulls the rope from the peer and leaps onto the Sawyer. Powering through the water, she feels her father over her shoulder for what feels like the first time since Maggie had come into her life. He doesn’t do anything, never usually makes any real change, other than allowing Alex to feel that little bit less alone. In years past she’s assumed it was her own guilt forcing him to the forefront of her mind to be cast externally allowing her to see him stood in front of her. To stand with her, watching over her moves. But she felt no guilt towards him any longer. She had run from the small coastal town she’s been trapped in her entire childhood, but she never ran from him. Never ran from family. She’d only been running from herself, the self that she had been then. The insecure child that still rested in that town ready to snatch her back up once she returned. There was nothing of that once she’d moved. Perhaps the occasional moments as its impossible to rid yourself entirely of your skin. But it was a cleaning. Only to have returned to the mud that dragged her down once she returned. She’d been clinging onto her guilt for too long. Trying to take the blame for things that were entirely out of her control. Her father’s death was not her fault, and neither was Kara’s accident. They were nothing to do with her happiness. They were a side effect from life.

And they were nothing to do with Maggie. She’d been creating her own excuses. Causing sadness by allowing herself to project her pain onto Maggie and then leaving her. She never allowed herself to be comforted by the one person it seemed to helped her escape her own self-destruction. And she needed to get her back.

Sat out on the rock just past the point at which she had left her yesterday sat Maggie, neither cold nor torn down. Just at peace with the cutting wind as though waiting for Alex this entire time.

“Hey,” Alex calls, pulling the boat onto the rock by Maggie’s side. Maggie watches, with narrowed eyes.

“Hey.” She replies, the voice of the betrayed.

“Down on the rocks, I saw seals.”

“My kind?” Maggie says in return.

Shame washes over Alex, the reality of just what she had done, all because of some personal vendetta her mind seemed to have over itself.

“No, but you thought it.”

Alex can’t deny it. For a brief moment upon seeing them, she had looked within them to see is Maggie had been among them. “They all slipped into the water.”

Maggie nods, “I was going to join them. Be rid of this town, this life forever.”

Alex’s guilt rattles in her chest like a steel drum. Creating a chorus of deafening beats. As much as Maggie was to her, it seemed she was to Maggie and it seemed a level of responsibility Alex wasn’t sure she was ready for.

“What changed your mind?” Alex asks.

“What changed yours?” Her response comes. Somehow answering. That future. That promise, leading them both to this moment.

“Kara was switching the channels on the TV. Your song came on.” Alex tells her.

“It was never _my_ song.”

And Alex can’t help but laugh. It was. It would always be Maggie’s song. No matter the creator, nor the one with the right to it; it was always Maggie’s. Her Maggie’s.

“Who is he? The man after you?” Alex can’t help but allow her practicality to get in the way. The other obstruction other than her own doubt; Maggie’s past.

Maggie shakes her head, “No. Take me home.”

“Where is home?”

“Where do you think?” Maggie offers, and upon Alex hollow stare of thought, “Wherever you are.”

“You have to tell me the truth about yourself eventually.”

Maggie looks up, “The truth?” she thinks it over, “The truth is I’m a creature from the sea that found her seal coat and buried it because she found a family she liked.” Maggie lies.

Alex’s eyes fill with sorrow, what truth would be so bad that she could share it with Alex, “Please.”

Maggie clenches her jaw and takes only one glance to Alex. It’s all she can bare. She can’t stare into the eyes of someone who in one truth would feel horrified, “That’s… one truth. The other is that I’m a girl running from her parents in the only way she knows how; taking foolish measures.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m a drug mule from Italy.”

Alex’s mouth breaks a smile that Maggie is unsure how to react to. “I said the real truth.”

Maggie nods, tears clinging to her cheeks. She looks to the face which she expects to no longer know her, but instead, she finds only comfort and concern. It breaks her inside, to have someone hear such a thing and only have concern. Alex’s smile has dropped, her brow has furrowed and Maggie was sure that is the obstacle of distance hadn’t been there, Alex wouldn’t have hesitated to lurch forward taking Maggie into her arms.

“This is the real truth. I ran away from my parents when I was sixteen. I found Mon-El who I thought I could be in love with if I tried. He was a foreigner to me, spoke in a language I hadn’t heard. I was fascinated but I mistook it for something more. I was… trying to find way out. And he… conveniently provided one. But not a good one. We were on a boat with a kilo of heroin in a backpack. The Coast Guard came, Mon-El made me swim for it.” Maggie tells her, watching as nothing but confusion passed over her face while Maggie’s contorts into nothing but a vessel of pain.

Alex clears her throat, finding her voice to ask only one question, “Mon-El?”

“My selkie husband. Mia menzogna. He was like a monster from a fairy tale.” The contrast dawns on Maggie, how magical what he proposed was, yet how torturous her escape had been. “but, he couldn’t swim. So, he made me take to the water. I was always a good swimmer, but your waves wore me down. I swam till I could swim no more. Then I floated.” She pauses, “Then I sank. It was almost a relief. I said, “Here goes… I die.”” Maggie stops now. As Alex has pulled up completely and tied the boat securely to the rocks. She hops out and makes her way over to Maggie to do nothing but listen, to take Maggie in her embrace and hold her. “You brought me back to like.” Maggie tells her again and simply saying it proves another breath of relief to her, “I found a small house, a family. Now it’s gone, okay?”

“The house isn’t going anywhere,” Alex says, wrapping more tightly around Maggie’s shivering body. She shivers not from the temperature – after so long she doubts the temperature will have any effect – but out of fear. Of what lies ahead. Acceptance doesn’t come so easily as this. Not for her. “What’s your real name?”

“Maggie. I didn’t lie about that.”

“And Sawyer?”

“Maggie Lima.” She says, the name having fallen retrieved from the depths of her mind. She hadn’t used the name since she’d left Italy. It was an old life. A past life.

“I prefer Sawyer.” Alex smiles, pressing hard kisses into Maggie’s hair.

Maggie grips Alex’s arms to herself, finally feeling safe within them. Having nothing but air between them. No secrets or lies. Laid bare before one another for the first time, they do nothing but sit. Enjoying it. “Me too.” She replies, watching the waves lap onto of one another. On the horizon a house where she knows she’ll find home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally the answer you've been hoping for. Hope it doesn't disappoint. There's still more, so stay tuned...


	20. Guddle (noun) - a mess smaller than ours that is easier to solve than ours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last one! It's a little longer, but we finally made it to the end. i hope you enjoy it...

It would have been nice to say that once Maggie and Alex had returned to the house, that this was the end of their turmoil. That Kara soon recovered without a hitch and was soon to recover to National City. It would have been nice to say that Mon-El became nothing but a memory to Maggie that she often reflected upon with faint embarrassment. But this was not the case. As Alex and Maggie walked back to the house, arm in arm, content, they did not expect what would come next.

“She’ll be thrilled to see you,” Alex tells Maggie pushing the door which had been left ajar. This should have been the first clue, but Alex didn’t let it press too much on her mind. Thinking she must have only forgotten to close it fully, or that Kara had nipped out to get something she continued into the house. Kara had lit candles throughout the house rather than turn the lights on. Something that she often did, but Alex wished she didn’t.

“Kara?” Maggie called out, expecting the girl she had come to see as family come bounding over to her gleefully.

Instead, a shaky voice shouts out from the living area, “I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Tell who?” Alex asks, flicking the lights on fully now to find her sister sitting on the sofa, a gun pointed to her by the unstable man she’d seen around the town.

Maggie pulls away from Alex, running to stand between the gun and Kara. Arms stretched out wide, she tried to act as a human shield against any harm Mon-El was to inflict upon Kara.

“That’s not quite true is it, Kara? We had a nice little chat about Maggie here. About how she came out of the water.” Mon-El smiles over Maggie’s shoulder to Kara who shivers with fear at the man. He’d said he was a friend to Maggie, someone from her previous life. Kara, as naïve as she was hospitable, allowed him in. Sat him down and allowed him to wait for Maggie’s return.

He’d grown impatient, asking repetitively about a bag, about where she’d been found. Trying to scrape Kara’s head of knowledge on the subject of Maggie. If only she had known that is was he who had caused her accident, who had caused the main obstacle between her sister and her new family member.

“But I didn’t say anything important!” Kara pleads. Crying sandpaper tears that scratch their way down her cheeks.

“She doesn’t know anything,” Maggie shouts, trying to reach out to Mon-El. Get him to lower his threat. “She’s innocent.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Mon-El starts. “Harbouring a criminal is hardly innocent.”

“She isn’t.” Alex calls, making herself known to Mon-El now who had previously not spared her a glance, “I am. This is my house. Leave Kara out of it.”

Mon-El turns to Alex, standing straight and lowering his gun, he takes her in as though she were nothing but a mild inconvenience to him. Maggie breathes out her relief of Kara’s safety, who too can now breathe again.

“You’re the one who’s been keeping her captive?” Mon-El accuses, but Alex knows better than to rise to it.

She nods, “She’s been staying with me, yes.”

“And who the heck _are_ you?”

“Alex the Fisherwoman.”

Mon-El laughs from his gut, a loud and deep laugh that cut deep into everyone else. “How sweet. The drugmule and the fisherwoman.” He now turns to Maggie directly, “Unfortunately for you, you have something of mine.”

“I’ll get I back.” Maggie pauses, trying to reason was perhaps not the well-advised choice, “Just.. please put the gun away,” but it wasn’t going to stop her from trying.

“Where is it?!” Mon-El shouts to her.

“What is she talking about?” Alex now voices, struggling to understand Mon-El’s apparent desperation.

“My seal coat.” Maggie tries, keeping the entire thing as light as she can, “I will get it for you, just don’t hurt them.”

Alex shakes her head, “Don’t give it to him.”

Kara and Maggie both look to Alex in confusion for differing reasons. Kara, unable to keep up but knowing that the euphemisms were being used for her benefit; Maggie, on the other hand was simply unsure of Alex’s reasoning to refuse their way out.

“I have to,” Maggie tells Alex.

“Kara, what happens then if the seal coat is dug up? In the story?” Alex asks.

Kara, even more confused as to why fairy tales were being brought into the mix when faced with death spoke in a small voice, “She goes back to the water.”

“It’s a story Alex, this is real,” Maggie shouts.

“It’s true though. If you give it back, how can we be certain he’ll leave?”

They turn to Mon-El, seemingly bored with what was going down. He shakes his head, “I just want the… coat.”

Alex stands up straight, “Then put the gun away.”

Mon-El grits his teeth, “Not until I have that bag.”

Kara looks to Alex confused but is quickly hushed. If only she had have continued. It wasn’t confusion Kara was looking to Alex to explain. It was to explain herself. Explain, before they all rushed off to the greenhouse led by Maggie. Kara tried, she tried to tell Alex what she knew, but Alex, thinking she were only going to ask a question, only dismissed her.

Alex and Kara stood by the door of the greenhouse, shivering clinging together watching at Maggie dug with her bare hands into the icy soil. It cut her knuckles by numbed its own inflicted pain. She dug until the ground were unbearable to claw at any longer. Until she’d gone too deep.

It couldn’t be. This was the right spot. She remembered it being so, there was no mistaking. She paused, kneeling with her hands upon the ground. Bleeding and helpless.

“What?” Mon-El shouts to her, noting her failure to retrieve the object. Gun now raised he asks again, his voice filled with fear, with uncertainty. Without the gun as his crutch, he would have been rendered useless.

“Here. It was here, I swear.” Maggie pleads as Mon-El’s finger rests on her trigger. Tears flow down Maggie’s cheeks as Alex lurches forward. Knocking the gun from Mon-El’s hands, twisting his wrist to loosen his grip on it. The gun was thrown to the side, but it didn’t stop Mon-El from using the distraction to grab Alex around the neck and hold her in a headlock. She flailed and kicked, but it was useless.

“Stop it!” Maggie screamed as his grip grew tighter.

“Where is it?” He bites out each word individually.

“Not here.” Kara now shouts, causing the attention to settle on the girl who had finally been allowed to speak. Alex, in her state, could only look to Kara with eye pleading her to stop.

“How do you know?” Maggie asks delicately.

“I moved it.” Confusion from everyone settles on her, “I came out here and noticed the fresh dirt on her ground. I dug it up. The bag. And I moved it.”

“Why?”

Kara shrugs, “I didn’t want it to get damaged.”

Maggie, still on her knees shuffles over to Kara to take her hand in her own, “can you tell me where?”

Kara turns to Mon-El, “You have to promise to leave, you leave without Maggie. Without hurting _anyone._ ”

Mon-El reluctantly nods and then after another moment of thought lets go of Alex to splutters as she falls to the ground. Maggie immediately takes her in her arms.

“The safe.” Kara shakily said.

“What?” Mon-El asks, staring holes into Kara.

“What safe?” Alex asked.

“Dad’s safe on the boat,” Kara answered.

“Show me!” Mon-El shouted as he grabbed Kara by the collar and dragged her to the boat. Alex and Maggie quickly followed hurrying to ensure that if Mon-El hadn't followed through on his deal then there would have been consequences. Alex wasn’t sure how, but she would have worked out some way to get the gun from him, and once she’d managed that he had nothing.

Kara led him to the boat and into the front cabin. She shivered with her thin layers. Dressing gowns and PJs did very little against the sea wind. Crouching down to their father’s safe Kara tried to work her numb fingers to twist the lock.

Alex never went near the safe. She never dared. It wasn’t hers. It never was. Kara had no sentimental attachment to the object. It was an empty safe, their mother had cleared it out after he had died. They all knew that there was nothing but the structure of the boat that Jeremiah was to be tied to.

“Hurry up!” Mon-El shouted holding the gun to Kara’s head as he stood over her.

“I can’t see!” Kara shouted back, biting the tears.

Mon-El reached into his pocket and pulled out a Zippo lighter as he threw it to Kara. The memory stuck out to Alex when she’d met him of his asking for a lighter. The one he pulled from his pocket was not one acquired on the island, it had been purchased beforehand. The entire time he’d known and had tried to play Alex into leading him to Maggie.

Kara struck it, holding the flame with one hand and working the lock with the other. Finally, the click of the lock sounded and the door opened. She swung open the door and reached inside to empty the contents. The bag, still covered in seaweeds freezing to the touch. Mon-El wasted no time in snatching it from Kara and riffling through it. “It’s full of water.” He complained.

“Who is he?” Kara asked Maggie once she’d stood again and had been taken into Maggie’s embrace as an attempt to calm her nerves as well as heat her up.

“Someone I wished you’d never had to meet,” Maggie replied, offering no more.

“Perhaps then we wouldn’t have met you,” Kara asked.

Maggie thinks it over, would she have sacrificed knowing the Danvers for saving them from Mon-El. She seemed so sure, but hearing the earnest in Kara’s voice she thinks as much as she needed them, they had needed her. To kick something into life. To begin that next step that Alex had been struggling to stumble upon herself.

Mon-El snatched the lighter back from Kara, trying to help him see better. He pulls out the sealed plastic bags inside the rucksack and smiles, the light underneath his chin painting him a demon in the night.

A demon who stands a little too close to the edge. Gun having been laid down previously in order to take the lighter, Alex picks it up and without thought takes a single shot into his foot.

The following events happen quicker than anyone could have kept track of. Each person present remembered a little part of their own that later allowed the police to construct a story freeing the Danvers and Maggie from any blame.

Alex watched as the bullet went straight through his shoe and foot into the decking with a cracking sound that she wasn’t sure if was his bones or the wood. He screamed out, reaching for his foot and causing him to topple back over the side. She noticed how he dropped the bag in his doing so, and she grasped for it, evidence for the police later.

Maggie watched over the side as he landed in the dark water, thrashing out with his long limbs with no success as keeping himself afloat. “Help!” He cried, “I can’t swim!” but she already knew this. And she did nothing. She just watched as he flailed and sputtered, his mouth filling with water that he tried to spit out, but wasn’t quick enough before more water flooded in.

Kara watched as the lighter fell to the deck. It surprised her with the amount of water on that boat just how well it lit. But the wood was old and he dropped it over where the gas was kept. The flames grew quickly, engulfing the wood too quickly.

“We need to get off!” She screamed, pointing to the flames as Alex and Maggie’s attention now focused on the same area. Pupils widening, they all quickly jumped from the boat into the water. None of them had any issue swimming, but Kara feeling a moral duty the others did not fully understand pulled the cold body of Mon-El behind her. 

* * *

 

“So he couldn’t breathe underwater?” The police officer who had been sent to the scene asked as the three women stood shivering shrouded in blankets the police has brought.

“No, he couldn’t,” Maggie replied, glancing over to the body bag she knew contained the lifeless body of her ex-savior. And as she looked upon it, she felt only a hint of sadness. Not for herself however, for herself, she felt nothing but pleasure having gotten rid of the cancer that had been plaguing her for far too long. But for him. How he’d let his greed overtake him. Bet the better of him, and ultimately lead him to his demise. Had he seen this ending she wondered if he would have still gone down the path. It was likely. And Maggie had no doubt she would have done. Even after all of the grief she had suffered from him, as she stood wrapped in Alex’s arms she was a little thankful to him for driving her away. 

* * *

 

Alex sat across the table from J’onn. No longer able to sell her fish without a boat to fish upon she deemed that it was about time she made time to meet up with him separate from work. It had been weeks since the event. Sitting now jobless trying to work out where to go next.

“Not a business meeting this time?” J’onn asked sipping his beer.

Alex shrugged, “In some fashion.”

“I see the house is up for sale?”

Alex nodded slowly, “Figured it was time for me to move on.”

J’onn smiled wider than she had seen him before, “Good. Don’t get me know, Alex. I love having to around, but that mind is better than struggling to make ends meet on a boat.”

Alex wouldn’t have known she were crying where is not for the droplet to land on the back of her hand. She looked down, not sure how to reply.

“And what about Maggie?” he asked.

“She’s in front of the judge next week.”

“And?” J’onn asked.

“And she’s a non-national.”

“And?”

“Are you just trying to get the gossip out of me for your fishy friends?”

J’onn laughs, “no, I’m still just an oak.”

“I thought you were a… what’s it…?”

J’onn smiles, “a cedar wood,” he finished for her.

She nods, “a cedar wood.” She paused for a second and then continues, “her solicitor said she’ll get deported if she doesn’t become a national. So, she has to apply to the Department of Justice.” She pauses again, “or… get married.”

J’onn smirks, “So, who’s she going to marry, Alex?”

“Well, it’s not like there’s a queue.” She blushes.

“Well, I can't marry her.” J’onn jokes.

“No.” She paused, “You’re a tree.” 

* * *

 

A week later, it was Kara’s turn to bid her goodbye’s to J’onn. Though she hadn’t seen him as often as Alex, she still felt like going to visit her second father. She spoke a mile a minute detailing the story to its entirety. Even the parts that she wasn’t a part of; the fishing of the mysterious woman in the net, the short but deep romance, the crash, meeting Lena, Mon-El and ending with how she’d taken the drugs from Alex and thrown them back into the water.

“I lied to the police about it.” She admitted, hanging her head somewhat but feeling little shame. “But it wasn’t a real lie. Because if we’d have given them up Maggie wouldn’t have been able to stay with Alex forever.”

J’onn looks shocked at the sheer quantity of what he’d been told, but what caught his notice the most was that last word. The promise. “Is she? Staying _forever_?”

Kara, unable to hide anything nodded gleefully, “They’re getting married next week to make her a national. In National City.”

“So, she wasn’t a selkie, then.” J’onn voiced, rolling his eyes to the part where the story revolved around this fairy tale.

“Thankfully not, because you can’t marry a seal, can you?”

“No, you definitely can’t.”

“Not in the real quotidian world anyway.”

“Quotidian?”

“It means the one we have to live in,” Kara explains.

“You become very smart _very_ quickly.”

Kara shrugged, “If she was a seal, would you still come to the wedding?”

J’onn would have laughed had he not been shocked by her offer, “me?” 

* * *

 

The wedding had been small. J’onn, Winn, Kara and Lena (who was attached to Kara’s arm the entire event) were the only ones to attend along with Kara and Alex’s cousin Clark who officiated. It had taken place in the park, not drawing attention to themselves as neither dressed particularly elaborately. It wasn’t their style. Alex in a single red dress, Maggie in a shirt and matching red tie.

Afterwards, they ate at Alex’s new place; takeout from the local place. And Alex and Maggie couldn’t have been happier. Though their place was furnished properly, and they were living out of boxes, their lives felt more complete than had ever before.

Their promise of forever somehow feeling a little too short.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a little sad this is done to be honest... i've rather enjoyed writing it. It's... been a journey. 
> 
> as always, i LOVE hearing from you. please if you wanna just drop a comment then do so, or go to my tumblr even just to say hey; packetofjambagels. 
> 
> Stay Marvelous!! x


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